Spain: Huelva COAG-demand urgent meeting about the Chestnut

The worrying situation in this sector in the province has led the charge Chestnut COAG-Huelva to request a meeting to agree on measures.

Three years that the Bureau of Chestnut in Huelva is not convened ago. The worrying situation in this sector in the province has led the charge Chestnut COAG-Huelva, Jose Manuel Benitez, to request an urgent meeting of this forum, in which are represented the regional government, through the provincial delegations Agriculture and Environment, the county unions, agricultural organizations, Cooperative Agro-food and individual farmers.

For Benitez, health problems identified last year as canker disease, which kills the tree, and the threat of the possible arrival of the plague of avispilla chestnut, already detected in the province of Malaga and in Portugal, “make it imperative for immediate action protocols to help prevent the development of these pests believe.”

According added the representative of COAG-Huelva, “the development of these protocols, which are both Magrama as the Andalusian Ministry of Agriculture, is necessary because, for example, still can not use natural treatments to combat the scourge of the avispilla; In addition, these protocols must not only help curb these diseases, but also to destroy the affected trees, which only serve to reservoir of these bugs “.

He added it would be necessary to provide funds to research projects hypovirulent strains and destruction of infected material, to prevent infecting chestnut canker are followed.

Moreover, Jose Manuel Benitez moved that, considering that the agri chestnut has not come out in this call for 2015, given its indispensability for this sector, “also meant that the Bureau of Chestnut, supported the mayors of the affected municipalities in the mountain region, claiming the need to include the helpline brown in the next call. ”

Finally it is noteworthy that the forecast for the next campaign are positive, because “the weather is helping in these months”; However, everything depends on the level of rainfall occurring during the month of September. Last year, the average production of chestnuts in the Sierra de Huelva stood at a million and a half kilos, an amount that José Manuel Benitez praised the “poor”.

COAG