Argentina: Top fruit closes year with negative figures
Among the issues that generated the biggest problems, for example, the weather conditions did not help the plant's development. The low temperatures and the high humidity generated by the rains caused serious problems in spring, such as in the flowering processes.
Thus, the sector, which hasn't had encouraging signs for some years, continues its declining trend. Over the past year, for example, producers didn't harvest 350 million kilos of fruit because of profitability issues.
Producers understand that there are no signs that the activity will improve in the short-term.
The main decreases in the field, Williams pear and the Red apple varieties, which account for no less than 70% of the production supply of Rio Negro and Neuquen, are observed.
Meanwhile, as confirmed by the daily Black River, the companies have already stated that they will maintain their policy of not buying from third parties (producers) and that they will only market their fruit.
This will leave hundreds of millions of kilos without an outlet to be marketed.
Additionally, many companies returned the farms they had rented to producers and the only producers that were able to close a deal this year were the ones that agreed to be paid very low lease values.
Moreover, thousands of hectares were left unpruned in the winter and many of them probably won't be able to comply with the health monitoring needed to place the fruit on local and external markets.
In short, expectations are that only the quality fruit will have a chance in the fresh markets and that there will be a low volume of high quality pears and apples next year.
According to the private sector's forecasts, around 750,000 tons of fresh pears and apples will be marketed this year (in the domestic and export markets) .
Source: cronista.com