Potato
In the Andarax valley, the open-field potato keeps company with the irrigated vegas. In Huécija it ranks among the main herbaceous crops; at provincial scale, the early harvest is modest but well documented.
The Almerian potato tells a different story from the coastal greenhouses: in the Andarax valley it is also grown in the open air, on small irrigated plots. Huécija's municipal statistical record lists it as the main irrigated herbaceous crop, in the mid-season category — a local anchor within the valley, without extending that specialisation to all its villages or to Alhama.
At Andalusian scale, the Junta distinguishes several calendars, among them the early potato, dug up in spring. In 2022 Almería accounted for only 3% of the Andalusian area in this category, and the ministry's estimates for 2024 give 196 hectares and some 5,800 tonnes of early potatoes in the province: a real production, of contained size. Planted in the cold months — protection can bring the harvest forward by about a month — it is lifted from spring to early summer.
Farming history reinforces the bond: in 1944, farmers from the vegas around the capital joined forces to sell without middlemen at the city market, and their main produce was precisely the potato. From that stall grew the CASI cooperative, today synonymous with tomatoes. At the table the potato still rules: papas a lo pobre, patatas bravas, roasted with alioli, tortilla or ajo colorao.