On Saturday 5 November, the Sentiers et Patrimoine de Cressensac presented a conference entitled “How to grow acorn truffle”. 70 people attended the multi-purpose room at Hôpital Saint-Jean.
Hervé Coves, agronomist and Franciscan, presents this somewhat special culture, where everyone applies to varying degrees of success techniques propagated by the ancients. If the conference begins by saying “I don’t know how to grow truffles”, it has been steeped in truffle cultivation for forty years and is widely known in the field. However, the topic is significant, because from French production of 1000-1500 tons a few decades ago, 40-50 tons have fallen today, including imports.
Hervé Coves, a specialist in sustainable agriculture and agroecology, explains that the interaction between living and mineral elements produces truffles. It needs earthworms, slugs, some plants and bacteria, trees, but also animals that break up the soil by trampling or dispersing spores. He uses on-screen images, and his dominant idea can be summed up as: “Life is beautiful.”
At the end of the show, the Society of Sentiers et Patrimoine presented the Friendship Cup to the audience, allowing a friendly exchange with the speaker.
