One of the obstacles that the pineapple producers currently face is that they are not organized. Sebastian Calero Canda, the president of Nicaragua's Association of Dragon Fruit Producers (Appinic), who is also a producer of pineapple, said pineapple producers needed to associate because the government wasn't giving support to individual growers, that they would only help them through cooperatives.
Producer Ronald Casco said pineapple crops were a high risk for producers, so they preferred to work small areas of land and not get loans to start large projects.
According to Casco and other producers of Ticuantepe and La Conception, Nicaragua is not a big exporter of pineapples because the Mountain Lily pineapple variety, the most planted variety in the country, does not have the quality required by the international market.
According to Casco, in 2015 producers planted some 300 hectares of pineapples in the municipality of Nueva Guinea but were unable to sell the fruit produced abroad or in the domestic market. Thus, in 2016 producers in the area are only planting 150 acres with this fruit.
Producers believe that climate change is affecting the production of pineapple, because with the lack of water the fruit is too small. Additionally the international market is looking for organic pineapples and the producers from Nicaragua don't comply with good practices in production, said Sebastian Calero, of Appinic.
Golden pineapples
According to producers, the pineapple with the biggest market demand is the MD2 variety, also known as the yellow, gold, or golden pineapple. A variety that is sweeter than the Mountain lily or Creole variety.
The MD2 pineapple has a Hawaiian origin and Costa Rica began to grow it in 1996 managing to market it and to achieve revenues for nearly 806.68 million dollars.
The pineapple sector employs 28,000 people. United States and the European Union, with whom Nicaragua has preferential trade treatment, are the country's main destinations.
The municipality of Nueva Guinea is the biggest producer of golden pineapples in Nicaragua. Growing golden pineapples is more complicated and expensive than cultivating mountain lily pineapples.
According to the National Chamber of Producers and Exporters of Costa Rica (Canapep), Costa Rica has become a world reference in the pineapple sector because of the golden variety.
According to Canapep, Costa Rica had some 11,000 hectares of pineapple in 2000, and it currently has some 40,000 hectares devoted to this crop.
Low exports
According to the Association of Producers and Exporters of Nicaragua (CEF), the country's pineapple exports only account for 0.0003 percent of the value of Nicaraguan exports.
In 2015, pineapple exports amounted to $8,268.20, seventy percent less than in 2014, when pineapple exports totalled $27,160.67, according to figures from the Center for Exports (CETREX).
In 2015, the country only exported pineapples to three markets, one less than the four it had in 2014. The main destination was Honduras with $4,272, followed by the US with $3,976.2 dollars.
Up to April 7, 2016, pineapple exports to Honduras and the United States had amounted to $1,052 dollars.
Product diversification
"We've had the need to diversify our product," said Karina Calero Silva, a producer of pineapple from Ticuantepe who, along with other partners, is processing pineapples to turn them into jelly, jam, fermented juice, pineapple spirits, and even pineapple wine.
Calero Silva, along with 12 partners, created the Monte Lirio cooperative and have a health permit from the Ministry of Health (MoH) to develop their products, but are still missing a health record. Their products are sold in the capital markets and they are seeking to sell them in other departments. For now, the product with the greatest demand is the pineapple wine, said Calero Silva.
Source: laprensa.com.ni