The job of cork - it's value to the market

Debarkers, cutters, supervisors, water suppliers, muleteers, cooks, stackers, agents

More than 100,000 people in the seven Mediterranean-region countries depend directly or indirectly on cork for their livelihoods.

Cork is a vital source of rural jobs, with labour often divided between cork harvesting and general forestry, as well as industrial processing.

The harvest requires debarkers, cutters, supervisors, water suppliers, muleteers, cooks, stackers, agents.

Cork for bottle stoppers accounts for almost 70 per cent of the cork market, so the wine industry is vital to cork jobs and to maintaining cork oak forests.

In the Iberian peninsula, the cork sector employs nearly 35,000 people – more than 60 per cent in processing and the rest in harvesting. Some 6,200 auxiliary jobs are associated with the sector, such as nurseries, transportation, security, and equipment.

Poverty alleviation
The UN ⁽¹⁾ has reported that forests in North Africa play an important role in both environmental protection and poverty alleviation. Improving the processing of non-timber forest products such as cork there is seen as crucial to employment and growth.

Cork production provides an annual income to rural communities in Morocco of approximately €10m, representing 30 per cent of total income from forest products.

Cork oak landscapes produce firewood and charcoal for heating and traditional cooking in North Africa.

Cork oak landscapes also provide valuable grazing. In North Africa, Spain and Portugal, livestock are an important source of income.

Employment
Many EU-certified meat products such as the Pata Negra ham come from extensive cattle raising in cork areas.

In the Andalusian cork oak woodlands, mushroom production is important to the economy of local communities with a tradition of mushroom harvesting and consumption.

Hunting is primarily a recreational activity but it still provides a significant source of employment. The total value of game production in the main Spanish cork oak regions of Andalusia, Extremadura, and Catalonia reached €36 million in 2003 – nearly half the national total.

In 2002 the cork oak woodlands of Los Alcornocales Nature Reserve generated 5% of total Andalusian tourism and nearly 7,000 jobs.

(1) Source: Forestry outlook study for North Africa, FAO, 2003