"A country strategy from the southern south" is the motto of the 'Salmon Summit 2025.
Photo: SalmonChile.
For the second consecutive year, SalmonChile will bring together in Frutillar, Llanquihue, Los Lagos region, in southern Chile, the main business leaders, scientists, authorities, and representatives of the communities related to salmon farming. The 'Salmon Summit 2025: A country strategy from the southern south' will be held tomorrow, July 22, and, as a novelty, this year will also include the participation of the three main candidates for the presidential elections to be held in November of this year.
Jeannette Jara, Evelyn Matthei, and José Antonio Kast, the candidates, will thus be able to participate in the assertion that Arturo Clément, President of SalmonChile, made at last year's edition, which was held under the title 'Salmon Summit 2024: Powering Chilean salmon farming to 2050'. "We need a national vision for salmon farming," he then claimed. Tomorrow, the candidates will have the opportunity to tell what that vision is for them, and to do so from the south of Chile, the area where the country's salmon farming activity is mainly developed.
"We are very pleased to be able to hold, for the second consecutive year, this important meeting that seeks to analyze the main challenges and opportunities for the salmon farming sector at a crucial time for the national economy," said Clément. "The presence of presidential candidates Jara, Matthei, and Kast is a sign of the strategic role that our industry has for the development of the country."
A few days ago, the President of SalmonChile himself remarked that the Salmon Summit is not just a sectoral event. "It is an invitation to look at the productive future of the country with projection, dialogue and responsibility," he said. "From the south we want to put on the table specific proposals to advance in sustainability, decentralized growth and food security."
Among authorities, businessmen, academics, and representatives of civil society, the 'Salmon Summit 2025' will be attended by more than a thousand people. In addition to the three main candidates for the Chilean presidential elections, the event will also host representatives from the public and private sectors.
SalmonChile highlighted names such as those of former minister Ignacio Briones; the Global Marketing Director of the aquafeed company BioMar, Katherine Bryar; the CEO of the Chilean biotechnology company Kura Biotech, Eduardo Wallach; the President of SOFOFA - a trade federation that brings together companies and associations linked to the Chilean industrial sector -, Rosario Navarro; and the President of the Confederation of Production and Commerce (CPC), Susana Jiménez.
As the president of SalmonChile pointed out last June, this Salmon Summit represents a unique opportunity to bring together the main public and private actors around a strategic conversation on the future of the salmon sector and its contribution to the country's development.
"We must continue to build bridges that allow us to grow sustainably, generating quality employment and opportunities for the communities of the southern south, while we continue to be the second most important export sector for Chile," said the President of the main trade association of the Chilean salmon industry.
The venue for 'Salmon Summit 2025' is the Teatro del Lago in Frutillar, one of the most important cultural centers in South America and the southernmost international theater in the world. The event's program will be divided into three thematic modules.
The first will focus on the country's decentralization and the promotion of aquaculture at the national level. This will be the part in which the three presidential candidates, Jara, Matthei, and Kast, will present their proposals for the development of southern Chile and the competitiveness of the sector.
The second module, a panel entitled 'How to consolidate a global innovation hub in southern Chile', will address the gaps and opportunities to strengthen the region as a world-class aquaculture hub, taking advantage of the presence of a solid research, development and innovation cluster in the area, together with the contribution of more than four thousand SMEs that make up the salmon farming value chain.
Finally, the third block will be made up of the panel entitled 'How to reconcile economic development and the environment', which will be dedicated to presenting specific proposals to achieve this, reaffirming the commitment of the Chilean salmon industry to sustainability as the central axis of its activity.
