The 38th World Nut and Dried Fruit Congress, to be held this May in Boca Raton, Florida, is just around the corner. The event will host over 1,300 attendees, more than 60 global industry speakers and 12 nut and dried fruit round tables. But where did it all begin? We asked Mr. Antonio Pont, Honorary President of the INC, to take us back to 1976 to find out what the first International Almond and Hazelnut Congress was like.
“Of course there were nerves, but there was also a lot of excitement”, Mr. Pont recalls. “The Congress was born out of a combination of several factors: having spent a few years in the sector, I realized that the industry needed a meeting point”. At that time, relationships between companies were not as close as they are today: “you must take into account that at that time we communicated by post or telegram, the fax machine came along a little later and of course, there wasn’t much personal contact among us”. Mr. Pont says that for that reason, the industry was anxious to meet and establish personal and professional connections. This need, and the fact that Mr. Pont had been named President of the Tarragona Exposition Official Fair in Reus by the Mayor of Reus (Spain), provided the impetus to organize the first international meeting on almonds and hazelnuts.
“We created an Honorary Committee, made up of 23 members and presided over by H.M. Juan Carlos I of Spain, and in only 5 months we managed to get everything in place”, he recalls. And so, for three days in 1976 the city of Reus became the world capital of almonds and hazelnuts, bringing together more than 100 visitors from 6 countries, hosting 7 talks with more than 10 speakers and around 10 visits to the area’s factories and farms.
The Satisfaction of a Job Well Done
The Honorary President of the INC remembers the expressions of gratitude and kindness from his associates in the industry at the end of the congress: “Having the attendees come up to me to show their appreciation for my organizing the event, was what drove us to carry on”. Also, for the organization, it was an enormous pleasure to have Dr. Dale Kester from the University of California, Davis, as a guest speaker.
In the words of Mr. Jesus Murga, congress president, the event not only attracted growers, because we discussed growing methods, and exporters because we looked at world trade and its possible future, but it also drew farmers and sellers for whom it provided a perspective around which they could plan their activity in order to achieve greater profit and economic utility.