How to Produce Organic Chestnuts? Ecochestnut Project: An Adaptive Project of How to Bring Organic Agriculture within Reach of Traditional Farmers? ^†

Organic food is progressively boosting the market and becoming more attractive to consumers, who usually feel more confident about these products because of their safer, healthier, and more eco-friendly characteristics when compared to conventional agriculture products [1]. On the other hand, the agricultural sector needs to face specific challenges and find long-lasting solutions towards agricultural and food sustainability. With this objective, some tools, such as better farming systems, new technologies, quality education, and effective business models, have been proposed as potential tools [2]. The EcoChestnut European project offers an innovative vocational training process to support the development of organic chestnut production in Europe, integrating into a common curriculum all aspects of the development of organic farming, processing, and production of chestnut products—from farming techniques and production methods of organic chestnuts and chestnut products as a specific and traditional product to more transversal topics such as marketing, communication, and corporate social responsibility. This project aims to develop a comprehensive training course on organic chestnut farming and the manufacturing of chestnut products that will help to bring organic agriculture within the reach of traditional farmers. EcoChestnut will also provide vocational trainers with learning methods and material to encourage farmers to use their initiative. In this context, the development on the latest techniques and methods of farming to be competitive and up to date together with socioeconomic factors must be considered since all this knowledge claims to be transmitted to farmers, to set and apply the basis of a sustainable business in the field of agronomy and organic production.