"It's been almost 60 days and the situation remains the same," admitted Juan Riveira, president of the Association of Producers and Exporters of Fresh Fruits from Mendoza, in dialogue with the radio program Sin Verso, lead by Marcelo Torrez in Andean Radio.
Brazil still does not allow the entry of pome fruit from Argentina, arguing zero tolerance for codling moth pest, which completely affects Mendoza's pear and apple production as it mainly depends on Brazil.
Even the negotiations held last week in Brazil between officials of both governments failed, so producers from Mendoza expect things will remain the same for at least the next 45 days.
"It appears they will delay the measure for at least 45 days due to the ratification of zero tolerance of the codling moth," says Riveira, before saying they were receiving differential treatment by Brazil.
"The strange thing is that a Chilean fruit shipment with the plague was intercepted in transit to Brazil and the neighbouring country did not apply the same sanctions to Chile that it applied to Argentina", claims the producer, who said "Brazil is going beyond sanitary measures, this involves tariff measures of the political kind."
Regarding production, Riveira admits that, "it is practically impossible to keep waiting for Brazil to open its borders with the pear in cold storage. We can only hope that there are changes for the apples and see what happens next year."
The domestic market only captures 20% of the national production of Williams pears, making it impossible to support the market and prices. The Association of Producers and Exporters of Fresh Fruits admits that they still haven't assessed what impact this will have, but they believe "they will easily lose between $8 and $10 million dollars in exports because this fruit has no other destiny than Brazil."
Riveira admitted that this crop is practically lost. "Now the concern is what we are going do with the fruit during the next harvest," he says.
