To unite the market gardeners and arboriculturists of the department, the fruit and vegetable producers of Var have created their association

APFLV. The name may not be mouthwatering, but the core group is there and should quickly bear fruit: the Association of Fruit and Vegetable Producers of Var , created last Friday in Brignoles, aims to unite the market gardeners and arboriculturists of the department. A sector lacking representation, which by this means, hopes to promote local food production, defend the interests of the profession, have weight with the communities and why not, integrate the Territorial Food Programs (Pat).

These are the seeds that were sown on Friday by the twenty or so producers who travelled to Brignoles to elect the board of the young association: market gardeners, olive growers, chestnut growers, and fig producers from the Gassin, Saint-Maximin, Roquebrune-sur-Argens, Brignoles, Pignans, and Hyères areas.

Soon a producers brand

"At the moment, there are about twenty of us, the goal is to recruit new members en masse from among the 400 market gardening and arboriculture producers listed at the Chamber of Agriculture," announces Hélène Saltetto, the new president. The young woman, herself a fig producer and market gardener in Solliès-Pont, was given the mission - upon her election in February to the Chamber of Agriculture - of structuring the profession into a sector.

"We will do this without distinction of production method (between organic, conventional, High Environmental Value, Editor's note) and by going beyond union divisions. If we want to promote our local productions and make them visible to the consumer, the profession needs weight, a representativeness that is currently lacking," insists Hélène Saltetto.

To achieve the desired representativeness, the association has a lot of work to do: setting up a directory of member producers, pooling labor and human resources (HR) management, projects for shared equipment or group purchasing, a producer shop, etc., the most urgent being the creation of a " local collective brand" on the model of the old Terres du Var brand, to promote the fruit and vegetable sector. With a first deadline, October 14, for the diversification forum organized by the chamber of agriculture: the APFLV will have by then filed its statutes with the prefecture, found its logo and imagined a brand that gives energy to the entire sector.