Argentine Chamber of Integrated Fruit Growers (CAFI) executive director Marcelo Loyarte said there would likely be less of the common Williams variety this season.
“It’s still to soon to know the decline, but we estimate it will approximately be in the order of 20 or 25%, although the yields in packing plants were good because we had better quality than last year,” Loyarte said.
He said Argentina’s total pear production this year would be around 600,000 metric tons (MT), while export volumes would likely be down by 10%.
“The fall was not as much in exports as in production,” he said.
While Argentina has frequently been given the title of the world’s leading pear exporter in recent years, in 2014 it was edged out by the Netherlands, and Loyarte said he expected it would be in second or third place in 2016.
The country’s main markets are the European Union, Brazil, Russia and to a lesser extent the United States.
“[The sector] is working to find the greatest efficiency possible across the whole chain, whether it be in production or in packing and conservation,” Loyarte said.
“There is an analysis being done on how to improve supply but mainly we see that the varieties we have are good. We just have to find greater efficiency.
He described Argentina as in a “very special moment of economic activity” with a big change of context.
“As it deepens there will be many improvements,” he said.
“We have to recognize that the Government made some measures in favor of Argentine exports and that has a positive impact, but it’s still not enough to completely reverse the situation.
“But in terms of international markets they are maintained, and we can work competitively, so we are optimistic about the future.”
In the lead up to the season in April, we spoke with Esteban Filipi, an agronomist with the Avellaneda Department Chamber of Producers, and his views for small-to-medium sized growers was far from positive.
“The situation is very dark. We’ve had five or six years of a totally anti-productive crisis – the economic and strucutral measures taken by the previous government were anti-producer,” Filipi said.
“Growers disappeared and the fruit industry today does not have a certain future.”
He said hail that occurred between November last year and January this year led to a loss of 60% of pome fruit production for 90% of growers in his department, which is in the pear-growing province of Rio Negro.
“The fruit was left in misery, the plants were in bad shape, and that’s with respect to last season; in terms of what’s coming, there are plots that weren’t harvested and won’t even be for juicing, so from there we start with a sanitary problem and a cold spring is expected this season.”
If that weren’t enough, Filipi also said the codling moth (Carpocapsa) had been a threat to production as well.
“For the small or medium-sized grower, there is no outlook and much less for the issue of commercialization,” he said.
“We have been working below the cost of production for five years, which implies that the grower has to sell tractors and trucks, or in other words they have to release capital to keep sustaining the activity.”
