German Pioneer Who Changed Spanish Farming Gets Emotional Tribute

Algarrobo isn’t nan benignant of spot you expect to perceive nan words “revolutionised modern agriculture,” but that’s precisely nan bequest nan municipality is now honouring. In a ceremonial packed pinch family, officials and locals who still retrieve nan aged fields earlier everything changed, nan mini Axarquia municipality paid a posthumous tribute to Dr Hans-Dieter Wienberg.

Who was Dr Hans-Dieter Wienberg?

He is nan German intelligence who softly reshaped nan full coastline’s future. Wienberg, who died successful December 2023 astatine nan property of 94, didn’t conscionable present caller crops; he redrew nan representation of confederate European agriculture. 

Avocados successful Europe? That started here. Strawberries successful Huelva becoming a world powerhouse? His idea. Hybrid tomatoes turning Almeria into a oversea of greenhouses? Also him. If you’ve eaten thing grown nether plastic, adjacent nan coast, aliases ending successful “-berry” successful this portion of Spain, chances are you’re tasting his fingerprints.

„Adoptive Son of Algarrobo”

At nan tribute, Algarrobo’s mayor, Natacha Rivas, put it simply: “He didn’t conscionable toggle shape crops, he transformed lives.” And she wasn’t exaggerating. Wienberg’s activity astatine nan La Mayora experimental workplace backmost successful nan 60s was nan spark that grew into a billion-euro cultivation industry, nan benignant that kept families afloat and put Axarquia connected nan representation for thing different than sunshine and sardines.

His 3 children (Carlos, Peter and Carolina) accepted nan “Adoptive Son of Algarrobo” title connected his behalf. Only 1 different personification successful nan town’s history has ever received nan aforesaid honour. The room, by each accounts, felt for illustration a reunion betwixt subject and nan group whose lives were shaped by it.

The man that helped Axarquia to grow

Representatives from Malaga, nan Junta de Andalucía, CSIC and moreover nan German Embassy filled nan hall. Some said astir nan early days of La Mayora, erstwhile cipher successful Spain really knew what an avocado was; others remembered his near-obsessive curiosity and his later worries astir drought threatening nan very crops he helped introduce.

Wienberg whitethorn person been an cultivation engineer, an economist, a diplomat and a Renaissance-style polymath. But for Algarrobo, he was thing simpler: nan man who saw imaginable successful a spot of onshore and helped an full region turn into it.

Read here more news from Axarquia.