Water, Water Everywhere

Winning a merit prize in the 2025 Onewater, UNESCO ‘WALK OF WATER — Water Towers’ photo-story contest,

Geometric shapes dot the landscape in Almería where the greenhouse agriculture relies on groundwater for irrigation © Neal Haddaway

This article describes the story behind my prize winning photo story on the intensive greenhouse agriculture in Almería in the south of Spain. See the main winners .

Under the relentless Mediterranean Spanish sun, a sea of plastic stretches to the horizon, shimmering like a mirage in the desert heat. This is Almería, Europe’s winter salad bowl, where over 34,000 hectares of plastic greenhouses blanket the arid land in shades of white, hiding the true cost of the fruits and vegetables they produce. Beneath this artificial landscape, this dystopian “”, lies a story of ecological collapse, human exploitation, and the silent theft of a finite resource: water.

The greenhouses have completely transformed much of the province’s landscape © Neal Haddaway

The numbers are staggering. Each year, these greenhouses produce , 80% of which are exported to fill supermarket shelves in Germany, France, and the UK. But the…