Participation in EUROCASTANEA 2018

Press release by AREFLH / EUROCASTANEA 20th Sept 2018

Record attendance for the European Chestnut Congress and signature of the EUROCASTANEA network

More than 180 representatives of the European chestnut sector, from France, Portugal, Italy and even the United States, met in Plasencia, Spain, for the 9th European Chestnut Congress (Eurocasta), from 13th to 15th September. This is a record attendance for this annual event organised by AREFLH, the Union of Valle Del Jerte cooperatives, Fundecyt-PCTEx and the Extremadura region.

Each year, the congress is always an opportunity for producers, traders, chestnut manufacturers to prepare the coming campaign, to evaluate the future production potential in the different european countries, and to discuss the commercial prospects.

During the first day of the event, the European chestnut network, EUROCASTANEA, was formalized by the signing of an agreement in the presence of AREFLH Vice-President, Jean-Louis Moulon, and the 4 representatives of the countries involved: the SNPC for France, the Red Estatal del Castaño for Spain, Refcast for Portugal and the CSDC for Italy. This European network animated by AREFLH, has now changed name from Eurocasta to EUROCASTANEA.

After the signing, the congress continued on a round table of the main producing countries for a first estimates of the 2018 harvest. Portugal, the leading producing country announced a decrease of 15 to 20% and a delay of about 3 weeks, compared with last year. Italy is progressively increasing its volumes to 28,000/30,000 tonnes thanks to the control of the cynips. France should have a normal production, perhaps a little low in size for irrigated orchards. And the Spanish harvest should be rather good depending on the area, a satisfactory fruit is expected.

The various presentations of this first day made it possible to put forward the situation and the methods of fight against the diseases of the chestnut, the main limiting factor for its growth. Then a technical visit of a cooperative of the Jerte Valley closed the working day. The cooperative is part of the Union that brings together 8 cooperatives, markets 20,000 tons of products and has 3,500 members.

Lastly, on the second day, the technical visits took the participants to the El Común explotation in the Ibores territory. The finca holds 300 hectares of traditional chestnut groves and new irrigated plantations with the Ferata variety and sells about 800 tonnes of chestnuts.

Edition after edition, this European congress has managed to consolidate itself as the most important chestnut event in Europe, with objectives such as bringing awareness to the national and European public authorities on the necessity of a plan to ensure the survival of the European chestnut, and implementing common strategies for knowledge transfer. Let's hope that in September 2019, the 10th edition will be as successful as this one. It will be organised in Portugal by Refcast, the Portuguese chestnut network.

All the conference presentations will soon be available on the future website: www.eurocastanea.org

Links

Eurocastane<

Details

Activity type

Participation in industry event or exhibit

Activity work package

Project management

Activity number

AREFLH-WP1-A28

Activity contact

Andrea TIVOLI
EU Policy Officer
AREFLH - Assembly of European Regions producing Fruits, Vegetables and Ornamental Plants
Rue Montoyer 21, 1000 Brussels
Tel : +32 2 743 30 02
Mob : +32 4 922 052 66
[email protected]
www.areflh.org

Activity partner

AREFLH

Activity country

France

Last edit

13-12-2018

Event

Event date

20-09-2018

Event name

AREFLH

Event location

Plasencia, Spain

Event dissemination

Oral presentation