Belgapom wants to build a bridge between the Chinese and Belgian potato sectors. To this end, the association organized the High Level Potato event in Beijing with Belgian fries and the “Fritery” culture placed as the center of attention.

During the event, Romain Cools, secretary-general of Belgapom, announced that VLAM (Flemish Center for Agro and Fishery Marketing), APAQ-W (Wallonia Agency for Promotion of Quality Agriculture) and five Belgian potato processing companies will set up during the next three years several promotion actions for Belgian Fries in China, Japan, South Korea and Singapore in a project which is also supported by the EU.

At the same time, the President of the Boerenbond Sonja De Becker invited the Chinese guests on behalf of the Belgian potato value chain to visit Interpom 2020, the biggest indoor potato event in the world. Also, visits and contact with research institutes such as Inagro, PCA, VITO, and others, will be scheduled, as well as visits to machine and equipment providers.

During the event, the presentation of the WatchITgrow tool, which combines satellite images to data concerning soil, crop and climate to offer online crop advice, gathered a lot of attention during the event.

Alternatively, the Chinese Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs (MARA) and the Chinese Academy for Agricultural Sciences (CAAS) invited the Belgian potato sector to participate at the China Potato Expo in June 2020, an invitation which accepted by Belgapom.