Black truffle enriches forgotten part of Spain – 12/16/2023 – Market

When José Soriano was a child, the hills of Sarrión, in the cold, arid Spanish province of Teruel, were largely abandoned, covered in bushes and rocks. Today, they are home to huge plantations of holm oaks, under which providential quantities of black truffle grow.

“Here, everything revolves around the truffle (…) It’s more than a crop, it’s a way of life”, says this 38-year-old truffle farmer, owner of 30 hectares of land in this small town in eastern Spain, smiling. in the Aragon region, 45 km south of the city of Teruel.

A few years ago, this athletic family man left his job as a forestry agent to dedicate himself full time to the trees where truffles grow underground, and which were planted 20 years ago by his father-in-law in this town of 1,200 inhabitants. It was a choice of the heart, but also of the head.

“It was complicated to do both at the same time,” explains this man in his early thirties, petting his dog Pista, a four-year-old female dog trained to track down these coveted mushrooms. Furthermore, “in the end, you gain more with the truffle.”

In front of him, his dog suddenly stops at the foot of a tree with yellowed leaves. With a knife, José Soriano approaches to help her dig up a truffle measuring five centimeters in diameter. “Sometimes they are bigger”, and “they can reach half a kilo”, he explains.

Main world producer

Following in Sarrión’s footsteps, the production of “tuber melanosporum” (scientific name for black truffle) has soared in Spain in recent years, and the country is now the world’s main producer of this aromatic mushroom, valued in haute cuisine, reaching prices of up to 1,500 euros (R$8,086) per kilo. A blessing for the farmers who ventured out.

“Here, the land is very poor, not much grows”, explains Daniel Brito, president of the Association of Truffle Harvesters and Growers of the Province of Teruel (Atruter). “But paradoxically, the truffle likes this type of soil,” he adds.

According to professionals in the sector, Spain produced around 120 tons of black truffles in 2022, four times more than Italy (30 tons) and three times more than France (40 tons), which has now been displaced as the world epicenter of the “black diamond”.

Of these 120 tons, 80% came from the Sarrión area, the largest truffle growing region in the world, with 8,000 hectares of plantations. The truffles from this city, which holds an international fair dedicated to this luxurious mushroom every year, “are exported everywhere”, insists Daniel Brito.

This success is due not only to the use of vast areas of irrigation, but also to “mycorrhization”, a process that consists of grafting truffle mycelium onto the roots of bushes before planting them, creating a symbiosis between the two. “This allows the fungus to spread throughout the soil over the years and, if conditions are good, we can have more important production,” says Brito.

“Lifeline”

For the cities of the region, faced like many areas in the interior of Spain with depopulation and the exodus to the cities, this success of truffle farming appears like a miracle. “The truffle is a lifeline for those who want to stay here”, says the mayor of Sarrión, Estefanía Doñate.

Before the truffle boom in the 2000s, the city was losing inhabitants due to a lack of jobs and prospects for younger generations. Now it is growing again, to the delight of the city’s school, which has seen the number of children enrolled soar.

“There is very little unemployment here… What we lack are apartments and houses for people who want to live here”, explains the 32-year-old mayor, in whose city there is a municipal daycare center and a medical center. “The truffle gives life to the city”, and “we even have tourists”, she says, smiling.

These are reasons to face the future with optimism, even though success is fragile. Truffle farming “requires a lot of work and a lot of investment”, because the trees only start producing after ten years, and the truffle is “unpredictable”, like all mushrooms, recalls Brito.

A caution fueled by climate change, which could ruin things. For now, “we have managed to stabilize production thanks to irrigation”, but the lack of rain and rising temperatures “are worrying”, because “truffles like the cold”, something that Teruel had in abundance.