In this installment of the ‘In Charts' series, Cristian Crespo of Agronometrics illustrates how the U.S. market is evolving. Each week the series looks at a different horticultural commodity, focusing on a specific origin or topic visualizing the market factors that are driving change.

"Twenty years is nothing," one Argentine tango singer once said. However, for the blueberry business, that might be all that there is. Chilean blueberry exports hit their boom in 2000 and since then - despite the fact that volumes continue rising year after year - prices haven't changed much. Business remains relatively stable and producers and exporters alike have adapted throughout the years, never complaining about the state of the industry, but there has always been a downward trend in pricing.

In 2019, the industry saw the lowest average prices in the history of Chilean blueberry exports. As shown below, prices were about US$6.22/kg.

Volumes (kg) and prices (USD/kg) of Chilean blueberries in the U.S. market 2000-2020

(Source: USDA Market News via Agronometrics. View this chart with live updates here)

Growth of Chilean blueberry export volumes has been a constant since the start but now, we have to take into consideration the prescence of new actors like Argentina, Uruguay, Mexico and Peru. These new players have made volumes in the U.S. market explode.

Volumes (kg) and prices (USD/kg) of Chilean blueberries in the U.S. market 2000-2020

(Source: USDA Market News via Agronometrics. View this chart with live updates here)

In the U.S. market, blueberry prices are the lowest ever this season. As mentioned before, prices for Chilean blueberries dropped to their lowest in 20 years.

Chilean blueberry prices (USD/kg) in the U.S. market 

(Source: USDA Market News via Agronometrics. View this chart with live updates here)

It's also worth mentioning that prices in the most recent weeks have been the lowest.

Chilean blueberry prices (USD/kg) in the U.S. market

(Source: USDA Market News via Agronometrics. View this chart with live updates here)

Undoubtedly, the blueberry industry has already begun to change. 2019 has marked a critical shift in the market, as Cort Brazelton recently said "2019 marks the year that a transition begins in our industry that is driven by diverse offerings in an industry that is highly concerned with quality. 2020 is the first year that we, as an industry, should truly own up to this reality and recognize its inevitability".

In our ‘In Charts’ series, we work to tell some of the stories that are moving the industry. Feel free to take a look at the other articles by clicking here.

You can keep track of the markets daily through Agronometrics, a data visualization tool built to help the industry make sense of the huge amounts of data that professionals need to access to make informed decisions. If you found the information and the charts from this article useful, feel free to visit us at www.agronometrics.com where you can easily access these same graphs, or explore the other 20 fruits we currently track.