The most widespread use today for the dry needles of Canarian pines is to preserve moisture and prevent weeds in banana crops.
There was a time when many residents of the Tenerife midlands lived on the mountain. From the collection of the pinocha, cisco and firewood. The progressive abandonment of agricultural and livestock work reduced these activities to the anecdotal. And the regulation of the use of pine needles, at the end of the 90s of the 20th century, which was developed with the intention of avoiding abuses and preserving the ecosystem of the pine forest, forced the professionalization of a few pinocheros. The dry needles of the Canarian pines serve as food and shelter for some animals, prevent soil erosion and help maintain soil moisture and fertility, hence it was decided to order the activity and end with free, free and uncontrolled collection. The last people responsible for this hard work, and with little profit margin, are now a handful of pinocheros that mostly come from Acentejo, Valle de La Orotava and El Rosario.
Professional pinocheros participate in public auctions and they bid for lots like the one offered last January by the El Tanque City Council: 40,000 kilos at a starting price of 120 euros. Its objective is to acquire the pine needles for its later sale, an increasingly complicated and scarce business. The Annual Plan for Forest Exploitation in Public Forests, drawn up and approved by the Cabildo, establishes the places, amounts, cost and standards to be followed in the collection.
Domingo Salcedo, from La Esperanza, is one of those last pinocheros from Tenerife. And he comes from the cradle, since, although it seems an exaggeration, he was literally born next to the trunk of a pine tree. His mother, Donina, gave birth to him while working in the bush. From a very young age, he accompanied his father and his mother to get something from what the mountain offers: “Things are not easy, but thanks to the mountain I have never lacked a plate of food. And there was a time when, in my town, almost everyone lived from this». Now the situation has changed and the pinocheros have to go to “sealed envelope” auctions, which force them to advance payment without knowing if they will have more profits.
Domingo perceives that sales decrease, especially in times of drought, and acknowledges that the most important part of the business is now in banana crops: “The pine needles help conserve moisture and prevent weeds from coming out, so in the banana plantations in the south of Tenerife, there is a noticeable difference between the farms that use pinocha and those that do not. Like from night to day. And it even helps save water. There are fewer and fewer blocks left and in those that remain they are using more straw that comes from the peninsula, even though the manure is of poorer quality. I guess they do it because straw is cheaper than pine needles », he reflects.
«Electricity, diesel, water… Everything is more expensive, except the pine needles. It costs us more and more to get it, but it does not go up in price. Nor do they make our work easier, despite the fact that we help conserve the forest and prevent forest fires. Politicians always make us pay tocateja », he laments. Working conditions in the mountains are harsh and many times they feel “as if we were stealing, despite having the permits. It is not uncommon for them to give you a fine for collecting needles from the roadsides, despite the fact that they know that this is how fires are prevented».
With rakes and ‘belgos’
They cannot use machinery and continue, like decades ago, “assembling the pine needles with rakes, by hand, and then uploading it with the belgos (four-point hooks) to the trucks.” The work is sometimes lost, since there are still those who go up the mountain to steal the pine needles that the pinocheros gathered before.. The final part of the work is to tie and cover this plant material with mesh before taking it to the farms on the island where it is still in demand, “from Buenavista to the South.”
Domingo’s father worked extracting wood and pine needles from the mountains, a job that his mother continued and later he, along with his son. He has just turned 65 years old, but has had to request an “active retirement” to be able to maintain the business until his son, affected by an illness, can continue it. The auctions mark the work of the year and “if I can’t catch the pinocchio in El Rosario, then I’ll have to go to La Victoria or Candelaria. If I don’t win one, I won’t eat”, stresses Salcedo, who acknowledges that “there are fewer and fewer pinocheros, some in Las Lagunetas”, who are relatives of his, “and in Los Realejos, but things are getting more and more difficult, although the work that we do, that of cleaning the mountain, is something fundamental”.
Regulated by an annual plan
Eva Padrón, technician from the Environment area of the Cabildo de Tenerife, explains that the collection of pine needles is regulated annually in the Annual Plan for Forest Exploitation in Public Forests of Tenerife, but that it is the municipalities themselves that put this activity out to tender , in accordance with the limits established in terms of areas and quantities. The Cabildo limits itself to authorizing the activity, now in a simpler way, since a responsible declaration is enough. From the insular administration it is considered that there is a “more or less stable” base of pinocheros that each year continues to take advantage of this plant material from public forests, although in a quantity far removed from what was extracted 40 or 50 years ago. |
