Where Carmine is Still Produced. Cacti Plantations in Lanzarote, Canary Islands

This natural colouring can be identified as E-120, cochineal extract, carmine, crimson lake, natural red 4, C.I. 75470, hiding its insect origin. It can be found in many food products, cosmetics, drugs, paints and clothes. Little remains today from the time cochineal was bringing a river of gold till the middle XIX Century. Nowadays in Lanzarote there are around 200 hectares of nopal cacti (Opuntia ssp.) plantations around the villages of Guatiza and Maza. They add a patch of green colour to the rocky volcanic landscape of the island, though like all the fields there, the ground is covered by black volcanic ash in order to absorb some humidity from the Atlantic winds

The colouring itself is produced with a powder made with sun dried insects. Cochineal (Dactylopius coccus) was first cultivated in the Oaxaca region Mexico by the 10th century A.C. and brought to Europe in 1526 after the Spanish contest, and only in 1820 it was cultivated outside Mexico in the Canary Islands. By the time of Moctezuma in the 15th century several cities were paying yearly tributes in crimson dyed clothes and bags of dried colouring. In the 17th century this natural dye became a highly priced commodity and so its price was regulated in the main exchange markets of that time in London and Amsterdam. Till the discovery of industrial colorants like alizarin there was a huge of demand of carmine all over the world. It was originally called “nocheztli” in Mexico what means nopal blood and generally “grama” in Spain, giving the false idea of a vegetal origin of the colouring and also as a way to keep the secret of its origin.

Production involves a long manual process that makes it commercially unprofitable though the displacement of some synthetic additives considered carcinogen and a higher concern about the use of natural products might give cochineal another chance. When you look at a cacti field, you wonder how it’s possible getting there to pick the insects with the only help of a long spoon. Same applies to the fruits of the cacti which are sold for human consumption.