Green bean
It was one of the huerta's great crops and is now almost a rarity: 159 hectares in the 2024/2025 season. Flat or round, it is picked pod by pod, by hand — and the price tells the story.
The green bean tells the huerta's least-told story: that of the crops that fade away. Already important in the 1980s and still widespread at the turn of the century — some 4,100 hectares and 65,000 tonnes in 2002 — it was down to 159 hectares and about 2,957 tonnes in the 2024/2025 season: less than 1% of the area, volume and value of Almería's greenhouses.
The Observatory distinguishes two commercial types, the flat bean and the round one. The pods grow on string-guided plants and are picked by hand, one by one, to protect their skin; that labour, added to the competition of imports on the European market, explains much of the decline. It is precisely what makes it a product apart: its average price — around 2.60 euros per kilo in 2024/2025 — is the highest among the major crops under plastic.
What remains is sold almost entirely in Spain, according to the 2024/2025 season record, with the Netherlands and Germany as the leading foreign customers for the little that travels.
Varieties
- Flat
- Round