Articles
THE PROCESSING TOMATO SITUATION IN THE MEDITERRANEAN COUNTRIES
Maybe I was too ambitious when I chose this subject and I hope that I can do it during the allowed time. I apologize in advance if there is not enough time for questions, but I’ll be at your disposal after the symposium to answer to any perso who would like some detail.
AMITON means INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF MEDITERRANEAN TOMATO PROCESSING INDUSTRY; and was founded 7 years ago. At that time two of the members, ITALY and FRANCE, were already in the Common Market E.E.C., and 3 were negotiating for entry. GREECE entered first in 1981 and SPAIN and PORTUGAL entered just recently in 1986. So the five original members are now in the Common Market but since then AMITON has opened its doors to two new members: ISRAEL and TURKEY. And its doors remain open to the other producing countries of the Mediterranean region, such as MOROCCO and TUNISIA.
The idea was to have a permanant structure in which the professionnals could freely discuss the market sitution regardless of their different economic situations.
AMITOM’s purposes are:
- to promote, coordinate and encourage the study and research concerning the quality, the improvement of growing practices, the processing and the marketing;
- to make studies and recommendations on all measures better organize the markets and to stimulate fair competitions;
- to participate as today in international meetings.
We already for 4 years have done very important work to know better the monthly international shipments of tomato product, in quantities and prices. So we now know better the level of comsumption of all the European Countries, and during each meeting of AMITON we have a long discussion on the market situation.