Fepex Informs to the distribution of the advantages of the new potato and poses to Agriculture promote his consumption

Producers and trading companies of potato grouped in Fepex have moved to representatives of the Spanish distribution the advantages of the new potato and posed to the Ministry of Agriculture the importance to promote his consumption by his nutritious values, in the transcurso of a celebrated meeting in the headquarters of the Ministry and chaired by the general director of Alimentary Industry, Fernando Burgaz. The new potato is a rich food in carbohydrates, of big importance in our daily feeding, by what the experts in nutrition recommend his consumption daily, together with vegetables, salads, legumes and purees.

The new potato identifies with ease, when touching it, the leather raises without hardly resistance and when frying them his warm original colour and almost white, remains. This potato is a cool product of season, with a period of seasonal commercialisation that begins in the month of May in Balearic, Andalucia and Murcia and continues by the rest of the Autonomous Communities until November. The promotion of the consumption of new potato is one of the measures that proposed Fepex to improve the situation of this sector in Spain that has registered a very negative evolution in the last years. From 1993 to 2012 the sector has lost some 134.000 hectares.

In the frame of the promotion Fepex posed the set up of a campaign of information to the consumer on qualities and uses of the potato, as well as the celebration of a congress on new potato in Seville. On the other hand, it posed also the modification of the current norm of quality with the aim that the consumer can identify clearly the new potato of the one of conservation. The meeting kept between producers and trading companies grouped in Fepex and representatives of chains of Spanish distribution developed in the frame of the designated 'Breakfasts of the Magrama', organised by the Ministry with the aim to create a permanent forum of meeting and communication between the Administration, the distinct actors of the alimentary chain and the society. In the breakfast realised two presentations to charge of Javier Boceta, responsible of new potato in the Committee of Potato of Fepex and of Roberto Ruiz, president of said committee.

In the meeting participated Fepex together with the associations of potato: Asonal, National Association of Almacenistas, of state field, with more than 50 years of existence from his foundation; Asociafruit, rooted association in Andalucia, integrated cheese cheese by companies of commercialisation and also by producers of potato; CIPP, Iberian Club of Professionals, that represents to the commercial sector of the envasadores of potato; and Asopocyl, Association of Operators in Origin of Potatoes of Castile and Leon.