Brazil used to be the main buyer of the table grape produced in San Juan, and even got to absorb a third of what the local vineyards produced. This season, exporters from San Juan have very few sales contracts to Brazil and estimates are that volumes shipped to that country will fall again between 10 and 15 percent from the previous season. In turn, volumes had fallen by 7.6% in the 2014/15 season and by 60% in the season before that. According to estimates by the Foreign Trade Chamber, shipments to Brazil have decreased by 80% in four years because of Brazil's demand of performing applications of methyl bromide to the local fruit before it enters that market. According to the Diario de Cuyo, San Juan has no experience in bromination and the attempts it has done have been a failure, so the fruit arrived to its destination in poor condition, which decreased prices.
"This season's shipments to Brazil are 80% lower than in 2012. The impact has been very strong. The producers that continue to export do it because they are trying to hold onto a customer until the phytosanitary barrier is solved," said Antonio Gimenez, president of the San Juan's Foreign Trade Chamber. "The producers that continue exporting get lower prices than what they negotiate because, since they don't know how to apply the bromination, their fruit arrives in poor conditions. Fruit shipments to Brazil will be very low this year," said the exporter.
Brazil started requiring the application of bromide to shipments of grapes for fresh consumption in May 2012 after detecting a specimen of the Brevipalpus chilensis in a shipment from Mendoza. Despite this, the local export sector believes that this requirement wasn't established because of health reason but in retaliation to the constraints imposed by the Kirchner administration to Brazilian products. "We've lost that market mainly because of the bromide. Last year they said that there would be no bromination, but that wasn't true," said Maximiliano Turcuman, an exporter from Argentina.
Source: infocampo.com.ar