Argentina: Tucuman to export fewer lemons than expected

Citrus growing companies are starting the final stretch of the lemon export season and already know the campaign won't match the expectations had at the beginning of the harvest. A couple of weeks before the end of the marketing season, the Citrus Association from Tucuman (ATC) has stated that the volume exported will be higher than last year but smaller than the technical projections made at the beginning of the harvest.

According to data of the private entity, nearly 210,000 tons of fresh fruit have been exported so far, and expectations are the final export volume will amount to 235,000 tons.

If those amounts are confirmed the exported volume would be 45,000 tons lower than what was estimated at the start of the season, i.e. 16% lower.

However, this season's end result is positive when compared with 2015, when exports amounted to 173,290 tons. In this sense, there would be a 35% increase in exporters over the last year. Last year, lemon production was 1.23 million tons, including the industrial segment. This year's production is expected to be lower than what was forecasted at the start of the campaign.

Reasons
Roberto Sánchez Loria, president of the ATC, said the difference between the initial projection and the possible outcome was due to the weather and the difficulties they had had to achieve the quality level they desired.

"We will have less fruit for export than we thought. We had less fruit available because of the environmental conditions and the quality we wanted to achieve to send to Europe (main target)," he said. "The quality we achieved was good, because there is a foundation that we must respect. But to achieve it, we had to sacrifice quantity," he added.

Citrus producers had to suspend their crops for several days because of the autumn rains. Moreover, the rainfall recorded in autumn was higher than in previous years. "As a result we lost fruit that was in good condition and could have been sent to the markets. This was noticeable at the end of the harvest," said the businessman.

However, Sanchez Loria stressed that this situation had not affected their commitments with foreign operators. "We have fulfilled our obligations and with reasonable prices. The markets didn't have fruit and that helped us maintain good values for the fresh fruit throughout the season," he said.

US market
Governor Juan Manzur said that, in September, they would have a clearer picture about the real possibility of exporting lemons to the United States. Manzur made the remarks on the day that the 30-day extension provided by the Department of Agriculture of the US government, which is part of the process that will define if the citrus from Tucuman can return to that market, came to an end.

Source: infocampo.com.ar