Papaya cultivation is in crisis in Argentina due to low demand. The domestic market consumes 8 million kilos a year, but this year consumption is expected to fall to just 6 million. The prices paid by the industry for this tropical fruit plummeted from $150 per kilo to $80 in some cases, due to the overproduction of this food in the country. Meanwhile, in supermarkets, the price per kilo of fresh papaya stands at nearly $4,000. Given this scenario, producers have begun to destroy their papaya plants and will plant other crops in their place.
"It is a pity because these fruits could serve as food for many people. I have nowhere to place it and no one pays me to harvest them and take them to the market. Nobody is buying papaya here. Now people are demotivated. They can't sell their papayas so they're losing money. Next year people are going to stop planting this crop. As a producer, I think there should be a way, an export window. That's the secret," stated Cristian Nickel, an agricultural producer from the municipality of Colonia Aurora, in the province of Misiones.
Luis Scholze is a local grower who destroyed more than 10,000 plants a few years ago because of the falling price of the fruit. He used those hectares to produce tobacco, which has become a profitable plantation. "Papaya is no good for us. Now we are selling it for $80 a kilo, it's a shame, there is no way to plant it. The problem is that we have no one to buy it. When there is a lot of production, the product is not worth anything. Then, when there isn't enough production, they encourage you to plant it... and then there's overproduction and no way to sell it," he says. "The thing about papaya is that it's profitable one year and worthless the next one," he said.
So far this year, Argentina has imported 331 certified tons of fresh papaya from Brazil, Mexico, and Taiwan.
Source: lanacion.com.ar