Peru currently has between 10,000 and 15,000 hectares of Hass avocado and the country is planting more areas with this variety every year, said Fernando Benavides, president of the consultancy company Inform@ction.
Benavides also stated that Peru was on track to export more than 200,000 tons of avocado and that avocado exports had an annual growth of about 50% per year.
In this regard, he said, Peru is currently the second largest exporter of avocados, below Mexico. "We used to think of Chile and South Africa as two competitors we couldn't surpass; however, we soon overcame them."
Fernando Cillóniz said the challenge for this Peruvian industry was to order its supply. "Peruvians are reckless, we are planting too many extensions. I think we have to slow our growth and order our exports. We had problems this year because we were all exporting at the same time."
He also indicated they needed to reach more markets. Peru mainly exports Hass avocado to Europe and America, but the challenge is to export to Asia and Chile, "there are difficulties in both cases but I'm sure we're going to overcome them."
Another major challenge, he said, was to boost consumption of avocados in the domestic market.
V Sipa
The president of Inform@ction also spoke about the V International Avocado Symposium, Sipa 2014, which will be held on December 2 and 3 at the Universidad Nacional Agraria La Molina (UNALM).
This year's slogan, he said, is "Peruvian avocado: the challenge of growing in an orderly manner and reaching more markets."
Among the key exhibitors are:
Bederski Klaus, general manager of Fundo Topara-Peru, who will talk about how to achieve high yields of avocados in Peru.
Omar Diaz, Operations Manager from Agropecuaria Las Lomas de Chilca, who will speak on avocado varieties and rootstocks.
Engineer Guillermo Sanchez will speak about controlling maggots in avocado. Engineer Silvia Peralta, of Agricultural Don Ricardo, will speak about the costs of optimizing avocado plantations. Orlando Dolores, from SENASA, will discuss the current state of Peruvian avocado exports and about opening new markets for this fruit.
Other exhibitors include Akif Eskalen, a specialist in cooperative extension and plant pathology from the University of California Riverside (USA), Carol Lovatt, a professor and researcher in plant physiology from the University of California Riverside, and Robb Bartles, market manager of Mission Produce (USA), one of the leading vendor companies of avocado worldwide, who will speak about the avocado's world market.
Source: agraria.pe