Vegetables have been a very important element on the island, even since pre-Hispanic times. After the conquest and the connections with America, and with the islands becoming a nexus with Europe, they have left a nerve centre of cultural enrichment in every sense of the word.

Despite the complexity of the global economic and commercial dynamics involved in the economic development of the Canary Islands, their strategic geographical location, as well as favourable tax conditions at different times, favoured the establishment of the large monocultures that have continued to the present day, such as sugar cane, wine, cochineal and bananas, and to a lesser extent tomatoes. These crops fostered economic development, as well as cultural enrichment, thanks to the exchange of Flemish art with sugar cane, for example, or new cultivation or weaving techniques, which have established a unique craft activity on the island.

In the orchards, products were brought from the Indies to the European continent, and vice versa, which, with the passage of time, adaptation to the environment, and the wide diversity of the islands, in their orography and microclimates, have generated unique fruit and vegetable varieties present today in the most traditional and most avant-garde dishes of the island's gastronomy.

Today, the benevolent climatic conditions and soils rich in mineral nutrients allow the growth of organic products with incomparable properties, always under a production limited by the orography of the terrain in terraces, with hard labour and little or no mechanisation of the processes.