CIREN, Odepa and the Ministry of Agriculture announced these results at the Regional Meeting of Fedefruta in Rancagua. With this increase, the area devoted to cherries reaches almost 14 thousand hectares in the region and displaces the table grape. "Producers have to pay more attention to agronomic management to achieve quality fruit and calibers, conduct successful exports where the fruit must arrive in good conditions at the different destinations, such as China, for the business to be profitable for producers," said the president of the union, Jorge Valenzuela.
The planted area increased by more than 7,300 hectares in the region of O'Higgins in the last three years. The CIREN and Odepa, which is part of the Ministry of Agriculture, delivered the results of the last Fruit Cadastre in this area of the country at the Regional Meeting of Fedefruta in Rancagua. The region of O'Higgins has more than 85 thousand hectares of fruit trees, which makes it the region with the greatest surface of these crops in the country.
This increase is mainly due to the consolidated increase of cherry plantations, which between 2015 and 2018 has grown by no less than 57.9%, from 8,675 to 13,699 hectares.
The president of Fedefruta and producer of the region of O'Higgins, Jorge Valenzuela Trebilcock, said that this information would "help producers make investment decisions with much greater knowledge, in terms of the evolution of the hectares."
As a result of this increase in the area, the trade union leader said, "producers have to pay more attention to the agronomic management that this increase of hectares deserves, to achieve quality fruit and calibers, conduct successful exports where the fruit arrives in good condition to their destinations, such as China, for the business to be profitable for producers."
The Fruit Cadastre of the O'Higgins Region also detected an 27% increase in the area of walnut, which went from 5,527 hectares in 2015 to 7,023 in 2018, and, surprisingly, in table grapes, which despite no longer being the region's main crop, also recorded an increase of about 1,100 hectares. This, mainly due to the new plantations of the Crimson Seedless and Timco varieties.
The Fruit Cadastre elaborated by the CIREN must be put at the service of society, and in this case, of agriculture, and in particular of the fruit growing sector, said the agency's director, Felix Viveros.
"This is a work that is developed with the support of Fedefruta and marks an important milestone in linking the public world with the private world. Our obligation is to provide producers with all the basic information so they can carry out their activity successfully," he added.
Meanwhile, the Minister of Agriculture Antonio Walker Prieto, who also attended the regional meeting, stated, "we have to work with numbers, quantify what we have to reconvert; we can't work without statistics. I want to celebrate this great step taken by the fruit sector of O'Higgins."
Source: eltipografo.cl