Despite a catastrophic start to the summer, peach and nectarine producers should, on average, not do too badly from the 2016 season.
Raphaël Martinez, from the Peach and Abricot PDO, said during a technical meeting in September at the Serfel, that “the peach season went pretty well”. Difficulties could be overcome thanks to the small European harvest, only 2.7 million tons of peaches and nectarines were harvested (i.e. 300,000 tons less than the five-year average). Mr Martinez says that the start of the season was catastrophic as producers had high levels of production loss due to the heavy rain and consumers were shunning peaches and nectarines.