In order to have an entity that brings together the different players in the sector and that would allow them to work together to boost this sector, the Bureau of Raspberry was founded on Tuesday.
The founding meeting was led by the national director of the Institute of Agricultural Development (Indap), Octavio Sotomayor, and was attended by the president of the Fruit Exporters Association of Chile AG (Asoex); Ronald Bown, the general manager of Chilealimentos, Guillermo Gonzalez and the general manager of the Fruit Technology Consortium of Asoex, Sergio Maureira; and representatives of processors and exporters of raspberries, small farmer users of INDAP of the VI and VII regions, as well as professional public organizations such as the Regional Ministerial Secretariat of Agriculture of the Region VII; the Office of Agricultural Policy Studies, Odepa, and INDAP.
In this regard, Octavio Sotomayor said: "We strongly believe in the coordination between the public and private sector, and when I say private I mean both the business world and the small farmers of raspberries. The raspberry sector has been declining in recent years, mainly due to lack of coordination, and therein lies the importance of this Bureau."
The director of Indap added: "Today we are founding the Bureau, where we hope all the actors who have a voice in the raspberry world will converge. The idea is to generate an agenda and concrete measures, some of which will be the responsibility of the private sector and some of the public sector. The idea is to have an order to reposition the Chilean raspberry as a world leader, which will be a major effort for all stakeholders."
In turn, Ronald Bown, president of Asoex, stated: "It is important for us to be a part of this initiative because we know that a joint effort can help us achieve better and faster results. We as Asoex, and the Fruit Technology Consortium, have been working for a long time to support the Chilean raspberry sector, mainly through our Raspberry Breeding Program, in which we have developed three new raspberry varieties for the Chilean industry, which have characteristics that are better than those of the Heritage variety. These varieties are the Santa Teresa, Santa Catalina and Santa Clara, and they are currently available to the sector."
"The Bureau was necessary because the raspberry has been the pillar on which the frozen industry was built and the advantages that Chile has for the production of raspberries are unique, but we haven’t been making good use of them because we haven’t worked together, unlike other countries that don’t have the favorable conditions that Chile has but that are increasing. The Bureau is a point to generate guidelines in order to better compete from the small farming sector, which is a global feature in the raspberry sector," said the general manager Chilealimentos.
Meanwhile, the president of the Association Berry Producers of Chimbarongo, Hector Osorio, said: "For us the creation of this Bureau is essential, especially because we are small farmers and we need everybody’s support to improve. We are pleased that we, the small farmers, were taken into account when constituting this Bureau, so we can face, in conjunction with businesses and the government, raspberries issues that affect us."
Guillermo Sepulveda, territorial manager of the Regional Ministerial Secretariat of Agriculture of the Seventh Region, said: "It is very positive that the family farming sector gets together with the processing, frozen and innovation companies of this sector as well as with other entities that are related to the raspberry. It's great that they have this instance where they can talk and address issues together."
Finally, it’s worth noting that, in order to progress on defining an agenda for the Rural Bureau of the Raspberry, a committee was also constituted. Said committee will be comprised of representatives of Indap, Asoex, the small farmers in Region VI, the small farmers in Region VII, Chilealimentos, the Seremi of Agriculture of Region VII, Odepa, and they are contemplating also incorporating professionals from the Agricultural and Livestock Service, SAG; the Foundation for Agricultural Innovation FIA, and the Institute for Agricultural Research, INIA, among others. This Committee shall have the task of defining the work agenda, consensually with the Bureau, and then address them holistically in the Rural Bureau of the Raspberry.