Professor María Ángeles Pedreño has spent years researching how to take advantage of the increasing amount of vegetable matter that is wasted in current agricultural production processes. The sensitivity for caring for the environment of this academic number of the Academy of Sciences of the Region of Murcia goes further and reaches her obstinacy to recycle through her love for a Mar Menor that she regrets not being able to enjoy like when she was girl, and not precisely because she is the one who has changed, but the lagoon. As for Pedreño, he always carries his goggles with him wherever his hectic professional life takes him, in case there is a sea to escape to.
-Does current agriculture produce more waste than that generated by our grandparents?
-Of course, much more vegetable waste is produced today than in past times. The growth of the population has greatly increased the cultivation areas, and with more production, more vegetable by-products are generated. In addition, the demand for horticultural products has changed. In the past, when you went to buy celery they would sell you the whole plant. Now practically all the foliar part is discarded and what is sold are the stems packed in plastic with some leaves. The rest, which is more than half of the plant, remains in the cultivated fields. It is impressive to see the process of harvesting and packaging ‘in situ’, in the same field, and to see how the ground is covered with a mantle of young stems and leaves. Something similar occurs with broccoli, in which what is marketed are the pellets (florets) when they reach a weight of between 350-450 grams, and more than 60% of the plant is abandoned in the cultivation fields, between trunks and leaves.
