The Valencian Association of Farmers, AVA-ASAJA, asks the Department of Agriculture for a regulatory change that they assure is key for truffle production in the Valencian Community. They request a review of order 4/2015 of the Department of Infrastructure, Territory and Environment with the purpose of eliminating surface size restrictions for truffle farming, both for protected and unprotected areas.
Santiago Reyna, an expert truffle grower, translates what this regulation means in practice: “Nowadays, if you plant land with truffle oaks, they tell you that it cannot be a plantation larger than 25 hectares, however, you can have olive or almond trees. , and that makes no sense because it is a native species, its environmental impact is lower because it does not use pesticides, it does not need irrigation water, or chemical fertilizers,” defends the farmer.
According to the current regulations in the Valencian Community, truffle farming is classified as a forest crop subject to registration, so that if they are not registered in temporary forest plantations, when carrying out the agricultural reversion there will be a change of use, which if denied by part of the Department of the Environment, will go directly to the consideration of forest land.
This reversion, if it is carried out on land of more than 25 hectares (10 hectares if it is a Site of Community Importance, or a Special Protection Area for Birds) will be subject to an environmental impact assessment. They point out that this circumstance “comes into contradiction” with the agricultural aid offered by the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), which classifies truffles as “bud cultivation” and considers the cultivation unit to be 18 hectares.
Many of the truffle producers - and up to 14 exhibiting companies from Valencia, Castellón, Teruel and León - have met this weekend at the Valencian Truffle Fair in Andilla, one of the towns that exploits this product like other territories in the region. interior of the province of Valencia and the north of Castellón. In the Valencian Community there are about 1,500 hectares of cultivation, far behind other territories such as Aragón, with nearly 6,000 hectares, and where Teruel mainly leads national production.
“They are all very unpopulated areas where truffle cultivation is helping a lot to maintain the population, so causing complications for people is nonsense,” Reyna criticizes. The truffle, as defended by the mayor of Andilla, Miguel Sebastián Ara, “gives the municipality, at high risk of depopulation, the opportunity to have a sustainable alternative for economic development with an endogenous, economically viable, ecological, kilometer 0 product. sustainable and reference for gastronomy.”
Linked to this idea of establishing a population, the project “From the Forest to your House” of the Biodiversity Foundation works, in which Andilla participates as an area at high risk of depopulation, along with other towns in Albacete, Córdoba, Guadalajara, Soria, and Teruel. Generating innovative economic initiatives led by women to sustainably take advantage of non-timber forest products from these different areas and create new models of rural development is the idea of this project that was born in 2022 and in which Enguera also participates, where the product Exploding is the carob.
This is why the sector is waiting for an upcoming meeting with the Department of Agriculture, for which there is still no date. However, truffle producers insist on its importance due to the current context, "of a drop in production and devaluation" of it due to the lack of rain and high temperatures which, together with the proliferation of a parasite, They are harming the campaign. That is why they ensure that the quality truffle that reaches the market is already sold among wholesalers at around 700 euros/kilo and in retail sales, at a minimum of 1,300 or 1,400 euros/kilo.
