Producers of raspberries, both big and small, are having serious complications this season due to the fruit's low export prices, which stand at 600 Chilean pesos per kilo for conventional producers. This was revealed in a discussion during the First Seminar for Peasant Family Raspberry Producers in Bio Bio.
Producer and exporter, Robinson Peña, confirmed this and said that there was an oversupply in the world and that this was a cyclical issue for the sector.
The businessman, who produces organic raspberries, said more than 90% of organic exports would be conducted in February and that producers expected to obtain 1,450 pesos or less, which would barely covers costs. He said he had been working for 21 years in the raspberry sector and that he considered it a normal cycle as he had already experienced this phenomenon four or five times. He also said he expected this cycle would end in three years. Peña owns 300 hectares of raspberries and exports 2 million kilos.
Seminar
The Indap and Bio Bio's Raspberry's Technical Commission organized a seminar that was attended by nearly 200 farmers, the regional director, Andres Castillo, the regional head of the Foundation for Agricultural Innovation - FIA, Claudia Suazo, and the coordinator of the Agricultural and Agro-Industrial Areas of the Inacap Chillan, Jessica Alvarado.
The objective of the activity was to provide technical training in the productive and health aspects of raspberries when growing them, which is imperative to meet the new sanitary requirements made by the United States, one of the main buyers of this product.
The goal of the Raspberry Commission is to market the product more directly, which can make a difference when prices are lower, as is presently the case. According to Andres Castillo, "ideally farmers would purchase services in a first stage to export directly; and in a second stage, they might have their own processing centers to export."
In the seminar, Cristian Paredes and Celedonio Balmaceda, the executives of Socradex, a small business association in the district of Ñiquen that provides services to producers, spoke about their experience.
Victor Rivera Diaz, the head of the Regional Advisory Committees in Food Safety and Security of the Chilean Agency for Food Safety and Quality, Achipa, spoke about the Safety aspects of growing raspberries, and stated that it was important to have good agricultural and food safety practices, especially in this sector, which exports 90% of its production. "It is very important for raspberry producers to learn about the United States' new modernization law that will affect the countries that supply them with fresh produce, such as Chile, so that they can prepare for and meet the new requirements."
Currently the region has 1,493 hectares of raspberries, according to the fruit survey of June 2016, i.e. 45% of the national area, which is mostly in the hands of family farmers.
Indap works with 645 producers here through different programs. In recent years the Indap has invested 170 million pesos to incentivize production and 390 million pesos in loans for raspberry producers.
Source: ladiscusion.cl