According to a report, Argentina's blueberries are losing ground because of a lack of competitiveness. As a result, Argentina only produced 17,000 tons of this fruit in 2016.
"While the country achieved a record export volume, it didn't achieve good economic results. The Argentinian Blueberry Committee wants to work on labor, production, and logistics costs to gain competitiveness," said Sofia Espejo.
According to the last census of 2016, Argentina has 2,750 hectares devoted to blueberry production, located in the northwest (1300), northeast (1050), and in the province of Buenos Aires (400).
In general, the sector, which ended the year with a record production and record exports, also ended the year in the red: "We sold the production 25% cheaper than in the previous year," said the author of the report.
"This paradoxical situation was caused because the main competition that emerged a few years ago, Peru, has the ability to produce blueberries at the same time as Argentina but at a much lower cost," he added.
"Production costs in Peru are notoriously lower than in our country," said Carlos Stabile, president of the Argentinean Blueberry Committee (ABC), a private non-profit organization that brings together producers, exporters, and regional blueberry chambers from Argentina.
Peru started producing blueberries later than Argentina, but last year they exceeded Argentina's production volume.
"We produced 17,000 tons and they produced 25,000 tons. Two years ago they produced only produced 2,000 tons. This season's results were the worst and many companies lost money," Stabile said.
He added: "The state of the industry is quite worrying. The last harvest was the worst in the history of this crop in Argentina. Primarily for commercial reasons, our lack of competitiveness against other countries has hurt us badly."
The president of ABC said the goal was to regain competitiveness and that they needed to increase their productivity and efficiency to achieve this.
"There are many things we can do: improve our labor, production, and logistics costs. There are also other issues we are discussing with the government, such as tax and social security policy, mainly reducing the tax on labor, which is much higher than in other countries and decreases our competitiveness," he said.
Another point is the resolution that was recently approved by the National Commission of Agricultural Work (CNTA), which reduces the working conditions for blueberry pickers to 25 kilos per day.
"We had no say in that legislation and could not negotiate it. We believe they set a quota for the variable salary that is above the minimum and mandatory salary based on a performance that is quite low, which doesn't allow us to compete with other countries," he said.
He noted that they don't have a collective labor agreement that would enable producers to negotiate directly with the union and that they had to work with third parties that don't represent the industry or have its knowledge, which is why they end up committing these irresponsible acts.
Argentina exports 65% of its production to the United States, but the Committee fears that the blueberry trade may suffer the same fate as lemons (which were suspended) because there is a problem of competition with the American blueberry producers.
Source: Agrofy News