Last week, the General Directorate of the Food Chain held a meeting with the representatives of the Castilla y León Interprofessional Potato Organization to publicize and present to the sector the latest amendments to Law 12/2013, of August 2 , of measures to improve the functioning of the food chain.
In addition, this year a national control plan is incorporated that will be carried out directly by the autonomous communities and that will allow to extend and improve the need for contractual relationships between farmers and potato buyers, packers or other agents that facilitate the transfer of this product to the marketing channels accessed by the consumer.
Gema Marcos, general director of the Food Chain, has made available to the Interprofessional the arbitration and mediation clause model to provide the sector with a solution that avoids resorting to the courts in the face of problems that may arise in the fulfillment of contracts.
The potato is a sector with great segmentation in origin, very rigid in demand, and very volatile in supply, generally subject to strong speculative pressures at origin and excessive stability in sales prices and, therefore, dissemination is considered essential of the obligation to sign contracts as a protection measure for producers.
Castilla y León is the community with the largest area dedicated to this crop, more than 19,000 hectares and the one with the highest production in the whole of Spain, 930,000 tons in the last campaign. But in addition to being important due to the volume of production, the potato from Castilla y León is a product of the highest quality that needs the support of all operators in the food chain in order to reach the consumer.
The general director has taken advantage of this meeting to request an effort in the involvement of all the agents that intervene in the food chain. “The Interprofessional plays a very important role, but the involvement of both the distribution and the consumer himself is necessary, and we must not forget that the latter is the one who ultimately decides the product to consume,” said Marcos.
Interprofessional Organization of the Potato of Castilla y León
The process of recognition of this organization took its first step on April 29, 2016 with the constitution of the Interprofessional Association of Potatoes of Castilla y León. The associations made up by the branch of production are: Asaja, the Alliance for the Unity of the Field UPA-COAG, the Union of Peasants of Castilla y León (UCCL), the Regional Union of Cooperatives of Castilla y León (Urcacyl) and the Association of Potato Producers of Castilla y León (Apacyl), and for the marketing branch: Urcacyl and the Association of Operators of Potato in Origin of Castilla y León (Asopocyl). With significant involvement from all parties, the Interprofessional was recognized by the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Rural Development last year.
Objectives of the Interprofessional
The Interprofessional has transmitted to the general director of the Food Chain that it has set the following as its first work objectives:
-Offering digital information with up-to-date content on the potato sector, which is important for operators in Castilla y León, while maintaining, in turn, a network of operators that collaborate with information on the cultivation and trade of potatoes in the Community.
-Analyze the different potato varieties used in Castilla y León, with special detail of the cultivated areas of each one of them and their cultivation peculiarities.
-Develop and update the approved potato contract, both for industrial and fresh use.
-Design a training campaign aimed at both producers and consumers.
-Start a long-term relationship with the distribution agents, to find out what activities they propose to increase the consumption of potatoes.
