Apo Conerpo: regional funds for the production and promotion of the Emilia-Romagna PGI Pear

The pear campaign 2026 is getting into full swing and Apo Conerpo welcomes with satisfaction the new regional measure dedicated to the Emilia-Romagna PGI Pear.

The Emilia-Romagna Region is making a total of 1,3 million euros available through two complementary measures: 600.000 euros allocated to farms participating in the quality scheme and a new call for applications worth 700.000 euros for promotional and enhancement activities in Italy and abroad.

“Emilia-Romagna’s pear-growing sector,” comments Davide Vernocchi, president of Apo Conerpo – “has been facing extremely challenging years. Climate change, the brown marmorated stink bug, the return and spread of plant diseases, together with frosts, hailstorms, droughts and other extreme events, have severely tested farms and significantly reduced the production potential of a sector that for decades has represented one of the strengths of the region’s fruit-growing industry. Yet there is one element in this process that I consider fundamental: neither producers nor the Region have stopped believing in pears. Businesses have continued to invest, innovate and seek solutions; the regional authorities have kept up a constant dialogue with the supply chain and introduced concrete support measures.”

Producing and telling the story

For Apo Conerpo, Vernocchi stresses, defending pear growing means protecting much more than a single crop. “The pear in Emilia-Romagna is history, expertise, tradition and experience accumulated over generations. But it also means work, income for farming businesses, employment throughout the supply chain and stewardship of the territory. As a producer organisation, we work every day to protect and enhance this production, supporting our members in technical and varietal innovation, assisting them with the installation of active protection systems, and working to ensure that the value of the product is recognised by the market. This is why we consider it particularly important that the regional measure acts simultaneously on production and promotion: we need to consolidate the production base, but also to communicate the value, origin and quality of our pears more effectively to consumers.”

The pear campaign 2026

The initiative comes at the height of the 2026 campaign for Emilia-Romagna pears, which the supply chain is approaching with anticipation and cautious confidence: “We are entering this campaign in the hope that it can represent a further step in the revival of the region’s pear-growing sector,” stresses Adriano Aldrovandi, vice-president of Apo Conerpo, president of Consorzio Opera and president of Unapera. “The picture is not uniform: in some areas, production prospects are more encouraging than in recent seasons, and conditions give reason for hope both in terms of volumes and quality. In other areas, however, weather conditions have been more severe, and we are once again facing some of the difficulties we have had to contend with in recent years.”

A sector getting back on its feet

A situation which, according to Aldrovandi, confirms that it is still necessary to support the sector’s recovery: “We have come through seasons in which Emilia-Romagna’s pear-growing sector had to deal with problems that no business could have managed alone. Protecting and supporting our members’ production potential requires time, investment, research, organisation and, above all, a supply-chain vision. The Region’s support is therefore even more important now, while a new campaign is in full swing and we continue working to give this crop a future. The challenge,” concludes Aldrovandi, “is not simply to preserve what we had in the past, but to equip Emilia-Romagna’s pear-growing sector, with its wealth of experience, to face a profoundly changed context. We have the expertise, infrastructure, organisations and producers who continue to believe in this crop. The tools introduced by the Region help turn this determination into a tangible future and reinforce an important message: the Emilia-Romagna pear is resilient, it must have a future and it deserves to be supported, produced and enhanced.”

This article was translated from the original Italian version with the assistance of artificial intelligence. In case of discrepancies, please refer to the original Italian version.