Last season, the normal development and trade of Peruvian agricultural exports was affected by El Niño. This year, the sector has started to recover and there are good prospects for 2017, stated the agricultural exporters of Ica.
Salvador Garces, the sales manager at Agricola Don Ricardo (Ica), said people should take into account the opening of foreign markets to domestic products, such as the opening of China to blueberries and the United States to citrus.
"In 2015 El Nino had a fairly important impact on crop yields, but we expect agricultural exports to increase because the temperature normalized and there's been an increase in international demand," he said.
He also said that China, the US, and Europe had a preference for Peruvian fruits and vegetables, in great part because of the promotional activities led by Peruvian government agencies.
"This year Europe has been a very good market for our fruits and vegetables. The US also increased its demand for Peruvian avocado and market trends are growing year by year," he said.
Garces said that international prices had increased in this campaign because there was a growing interest in Peruvian products and because production levels were down in some competitor countries, which benefited Peru.
"The more open markets we have in the medium and long term, the better chances we'll have as an industry, because we will no longer saturate the international market," he said.
Growing trend in exports
Meanwhile, the administrative manager of Agricola La Joya, Octavio Bachmann, said there had been an increase in exports, mainly to the United States and Asia, of table grape, blueberries, and asparagus.
According to statistics of the National Service of Agrarian Health (Senasa), between August 2015 and July 2016, the region of Ica was the first exporter of table grapes nationwide with volume shipments of 140,000 tons, followed by Piura and Lambayeque with 100,000 and 25,000 tons respectively.
Source: andina.com.pe