Naxos: 17th Potato Festival amid falling output

The Naxos Agricultural Cooperatives Union will hold the 17th Naxos Potato Festival on Saturday, September 12, in the central square of Chora, by the harbour. The event was announced by Union president Dimitris Kapounis, speaking on ERT3’s “Perimetros” programme, and is part of the celebrations marking the Union’s 100 years of operation, completed this year. Visitors will be offered Naxos potatoes fried, boiled and oven-roasted, and artists and journalists have been invited. The Union president said “we hope to have more than 4,000 people with us,” giving a sense of the expected turnout. Holding the festival in September places it after the tourist season’s peak, when the island still draws visitors but residents’ daily routines have started returning to normal.

Behind the festival, however, lies an unfavourable picture for production. According to Dimitris Kapounis, this year’s harvest reached around 5,000 tonnes, a quantity he described as unsatisfactory, since a few years ago production reached 12,000 tonnes. He attributed the decline to water shortages and the absence of support infrastructure for the primary sector on the island, two factors that directly determine the outcome for an irrigated crop such as potatoes. On the same programme, Naxos potato grower Stelios Vathrakokoilis spoke, predicting that in very few years farming as a profession in Greece will no longer exist, and calling on the state to support the primary sector. The drop in production affects not only growers’ income but also the product’s availability on the market.

For Naxos, the potato is not just another local product. The Naxos Potato is registered as a Protected Geographical Indication product, a status meaning the name can only be used for produce grown within the designated area and according to filed specifications, with checks and certification. This protection has value only as long as sufficient production supports it, since the name’s recognition does not offset a drop in quantities. The Agricultural Cooperatives Union has operated for a century as the collective mechanism for gathering and marketing production, while the promotion of local products also concerns the Cyclades’ institutional bodies, as shown by the recent invitation to take part in a food exhibition. The festival thus works simultaneously as an event for residents and as promotion of the product.

The detailed programme of the 17th Potato Festival has not been announced, nor the names of the artists taking part or the starting time of the events. It has also not been made known whether there will be parallel activities for the Union’s 100 years beyond that specific day. On the production side, no support measure or irrigation project has been announced to address the problems described by the Union’s president and the grower, while the relevant responsibilities are shared between the Ministry of Rural Development, the South Aegean Region and the municipality. The next substantive picture of the crop’s trajectory will come from the next growing season and from winter rainfall levels, which determine the island’s available water reserves.