According to the president of the consulting firm Inform@cción, Fernando Cilloniz Benavides, in the 2022/23 campaign, Peruvian fresh blueberry exports could grow by 36.3% in volume and 17% in value over the previous campaign, totaling nearly 300,000 tons and 1,500,000,000 dollars.
So far in the current campaign (May-October), the country has shipped 153,228,933 kilos of fresh blueberries for 843,725,006 dollars, i.e. 31% more volume than in the same period of the previous campaign 2021/2022, Cilloniz Benavides stated.
"It's extraordinary. Never before had we reached 60 million kilos of fresh blueberries exported and in this campaign, there have been two months in which we've shipped more than 70 million kilos," he highlighted referring to the shipments made in September and October, when the country exported 70,658,254 kilos and 70,471,651 kilos, respectively.
However, Cilloniz pointed out, the price of blueberries (and other fruits) has been decreasing year after year due to the significant increase in supply from Peru and other sources. Month after month, prices have been consistently lower than in the same months of the previous campaign. In fact, in October of this year, the price was below 5 dollars per kilogram, which had never happened before, stated the president of the consultancy Inform@cción.
"I would suggest that we stop growing new areas of this crop and other fruit trees and start looking for other crops to cultivate. We must diversify our offer with traditional crops that have experienced price increases, such as potatoes, cotton, corn, sugar, and coffee," he concluded.
Source: agraria.pe