Ardèche chestnut harvest falls to 2,000 tonnes in drought
France's main chestnut region expects less than half a normal crop after a dry summer. Growers also warn that trees weakened by ink disease may not produce again.
The Ardèche chestnut harvest will not exceed 2,000 tonnes this season, against about 5,000 tonnes in a normal year, the French producers' union told the public broadcaster ICI on 29 September.
Drought is the cause. Very little rain has fallen in Ardèche since May apart from a few storms, and temperatures above 40°C in full sun scorched the foliage over the summer. At the end of September the leaves of the chestnut trees are turning yellow and brown, and some of the spiny burs that hold the nuts are drying out on the branch before the fruit inside has filled.
“The burs dry on the tree. They turn brown, and then we know there will be zero harvest,” Daniel Vernol, vice-president of the Syndicat national des producteurs de châtaignes and a grower at Saint-Étienne-de-Boulogne in southern Ardèche, told ICI. The nuts that do come down will be particularly small.
A chestnut tree can live with ink disease, but not with ink disease, heat and no water.
Ink disease puts the trees at risk
The drought lands on orchards already weakened in places by ink disease, which attacks the roots of the chestnut tree. A tree can live with it in a normal year; with extreme heat and no water on top, it drops its fruit and its survival is in question. In affected areas, Vernol said, growers see more and more trees drying out, and those trees will not grow back next year or bear chestnuts again.
The loss therefore runs beyond one season. Processors, who turn much of the crop into crème de marrons, the sweetened chestnut spread that pastry cooks use in a Mont Blanc, are expected to buy most of what is picked.
What the Ardèche chestnut harvest weighs in France
Ardèche grows more than half of France's chestnuts, according to the appellation body INAO. The Châtaigne d'Ardèche appellation covers 197 communes between 300 and 900 metres, uses old local varieties and applies to fresh nuts, dried peeled chestnuts and flour. It became an AOC in 2006 and a protected designation of origin at EU level in 2014.
The shortfall comes as the sector tries to win back its own market. More than two-thirds of the chestnuts processed in France are imported, Jean-Roland Lavergne, president of the producers' union, said in March, when growers and about 30 processors met in Montpellier to lay the base of a first national interprofession. The same dry year produced the smallest French wine harvest since 1957.
The Castagnades, the chestnut festivals run by the Parc naturel régional des Monts d'Ardèche, open on 10 October and run until 8 November in 11 villages, marking 20 years of the appellation. This year the producer stalls will have about two-fifths of a normal Ardèche chestnut harvest to sell.
