In the last six years garlic crops in San Juan have dropped from 2,800 hectares to about 650 hectares. The paradox is that, this year, the European market will have a good demand and better prices but the province won't have enough volume to supply this demand.
"We estimate that we'll have the same amount of hectares this year as we had last year, about 650. I don't think we'll exceed that number even though there are tremendous opportunities in the European markets. We won't have enough merchandise with our current production. There is a drop in production in Spain and customers are already asking us how our crops are doing so they can start buying. We already know we won't have enough garlic to cover all our orders," said Alfredo Figueroa, vice president of the Chamber of garlic producers in the province.
The producer lamented the Government and the private sector didn't have a plan to predict this scenario and to maintain the garlic crops. "We destroyed the garlic crops," he said. This year the dice is thrown, there is no time to reverse the situation because planting was done in March. "Unfortunately, we can't do anything, but we have to do something for next season and start to analyze the seed and prepare the land. It is possible that we manage to implement a plan for garlic from here to March next year," said the farmer.
Producers are growing tomatoes, onions and other crops in the hectares were they used to plant garlic. Figueroa said it was difficult to know how many kilos will be harvested, the garlic was recently planted and they can only analyze the crop in November. According to estimates, if the crop is excellent, producers could have around 400,000 boxes of 10 kilos each.
Albardón, San Martin, Caucete and 25 de Mayo are the biggest garlic producing departments. Calingasta, which was the mecca of white garlic for export, drastically reduced its number of hectares planted with this crop.
"Our advantage is that 90% of the white garlic we produce goes to the US and Europe. Meanwhile, Mendoza, which is the largest producer of garlic in the country, mainly red and purple garlic, sends most of its production to Brazil," Figueroa said.
According to figures from the Chamber, Mendoza cultivated 15,000 hectares and San Juan 2,800 hectares in the years of increased production.
Bruno Perin, a traditional producer of garlic in the province, believes that this year there are 20% less hectares devoted to garlic than in 2014.
However, he also believes that this year Europe's demand will be good. "There are better prices but the exchange rate leaves us out of the competition, freight rates increased too much, it's more expensive to send our product to Buenos Aires than a freight to Europe and overall costs went up. The dollar exchange makes us lose because the increases are in blue dollars but we charge in official dollars," Perín said.
He added that the area devoted to garlic had decreased in the last six years and that they were still "garlic producers because we have a gambling will and want to continue doing it, even with other resources that are not for garlic".
Quotes
"The situation is not as serious internally because we have packing facilities in our farms, modern machinery, seeders, harvesters. The problems are our internal costs and a very low dollar," said Alfredo Figueroa.
"Before, only 15% of the nearly 3,000 acres of garlic produced by San Juan remained in the country. But the high taxes and other serious problems reversed this ratio. We should have a parallel dollar for exports and regional economies," stated Bruno Perín.
Source: eltiempodesanjuan.com