Peru's avocado industry is seeing a predominance of medium to smaller sized fruits as the ongoing El Niño phenomenon causes hot weather, leading up to the second season in a row. Fernando Hidalgo from the producer and exporter Cultivemos in Peru says they have been hit hard. "El Niño has impacted greatly on both our mangoes and avocados."
He says their avocado trees just did not produce fruit with sufficiently large sizing. "There are avocados with a lot of small sizes on the farms and the market does not want them. The situation is rough, avocados from the coast of Peru are in a very difficult situation this year. Producers of mangoes were really badly affected and now producers of avocado will also be impacted," explains Hidalgo.
He says they started Peru's early avocado season in January, with medium sized fruit. Peru's early harvest is mainly from the highlands where it is much colder due to the high altitude. "Usually the sizes are bigger ranging between sizes 12 to 23, but this season we have sizes 22, 24. We started harvesting on our own farms on the coast. The sizes are a complete nightmare. There is a huge concentration of sizes 30, and between the sizes of 32 to 26. After we found that on our farms, the maturity of the fruit came faster than we were told."
He cautioned the traders in import markets that the sizing picture from Peru will change drastically over the next four weeks. "We visited other avocado farms in many production regions over the past week. We covered a good area and found that, what we have on our farm is what everybody else has in terms of the bulk that is of smaller sizing. The market should expect 60-70% of medium to small sizes, with sizes 26-30 that make up about 70% of production. Those sizes are not usually demanded in the market. The market usually prefers sizes 12 to 26. We explained the situation to our customers and have to find the right markets to sell to consumers. As producers, in the end, we need to market what we can and what we have in production. Over the next four weeks the trade will see only smaller sizes coming through because there will not be enough big sizes available."
For more information:
Fernando Hidalgo
Cultivemos
WhatsApp: +51 982 541 535
Email: [email protected]
www.cultivemos.pe