The combination of a “flat” dollar, a drop in consumption, oversupply, rising costs, unchanging taxes, and a decrease in fruit exports like apples and pears has created a situation that fruit producers consider “emergency,” as it could lead to a lot of waste of their products.
They are evaluating whether it is worth harvesting as planned for the first quarter of 2025: the costs outweigh the price that exporters are willing to pay per kilo, so the fruit may end up remaining in the plantations and rotting. This, in turn, would imply the disappearance of hundreds of small producers and put thousands of jobs at risk.
Evaluation of fruit harvest and waste
“Here we are assessing whether to harvest or not. It has been 15 years since there was such a low supply, everything has doubled, and the price offered for a kilo of fruit remains the same: 200, 300 pesos,” explained Edgar Artero, a fruit producer from Río Negro, to PERFIL newspaper.
“In the end, about 80 to 100 million kilos of food are going to be thrown away here in the Alto Valle. It will stay on the tree, then decompose and fall,” he added. “It’s been a while since we’ve been through such a bad situation, and the companies that export still haven’t paid for last year,” he detailed about fruit wastage.
Impact on consumption and oversupply
“The worst part is that the fruit will be left lying around. It’s a shame that no one is doing anything at the provincial, municipal, or national level. Everywhere, food is being left lying in the fields instead of being utilized. And no one is managing it. In a country like Argentina, wasting food is sinful,” lamented the producer.
The drop in consumption during 2024 (retail sales accumulated a 10% decrease compared to 2023 according to the Argentine Medium Business Confederation – CAME –) led to oversupply: the products that piled up are kept in cold storage, a service for which the producer pays more and more due to the increased electricity rates.
Storage costs and losses for producers
“The apple being consumed now is the one being taken out of cold storage,” detailed Artero. “If the buyer comes and pays you (hopefully) $500, out of those 500 pesos, you have to pay $250 to the one who stores the fruit for you. In the case of pears, they are taken out of cold storage and sold to the industry, where they are crushed to make pulp, so you get paid $150 per kilo. This means that the producer has to put money out of their pocket to store them and ends up losing.”
On the other hand, the cost of fuel and labor has increased, but due to oversupply, prices remain low.
Financial and political challenges
“This year starts off complex because 2024 ended very poorly,” added Martín Borocci, a producer from Allen, Río Negro. The end of the last quarter of 2024 was so bad that those prices that remained as a reference for the start of the 2025 season are already starting too low, considering that 2024 was still a year with high inflation,” he argued.
“In this activity, the cost of intensive labor has a significant impact, and that employment sector was one of the most affected by increases.”
In addition to that, “the exchange rate has stabilized, and the tax pressure has not decreased at all,” added the producer. The lack of investment and credit, he explained, has been ongoing for several years, and now there is also no political decision.
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