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.

With Peru's table grape season soon getting underway, we thought we would take a look at the Andean country's previous campaigns in the U.S. market and what could be in store this year.

The chart below shows how the 2019-20 season was more concentrated than previous ones, with a volume peak between weeks 3 and 5. Week 3 set a record for the highest-ever arrivals of fruit from Peru, with 21.5m kilos of grapes.

Volume (KG) of grapes from Peru in the U.S. market

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

Looking at historical prices of Peruvian grapes in the U.S. market, we can see below that they were fairly stable throughout most of the season, hovering around US$2.08 - 3.30 per kilo. 

In fact, the average price of the 2019-20 season, US$2.67, was the same as the 2018-19 season.

Historical prices (USD/KG) of grapes from Peru in the U.S. market

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

Looking at the historical prices of different varieties of Peruvian grapes, we can see that white seedless, Sugraone and red seedless have generally fetched the best prices, with Red Globe fetching the lowest prices.

Historical prices (USD/KG) of grapes from Peru in the U.S. market, by variety

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

It remains to be seen how the grape season will develop in northern Peru, where it seems growing conditions have been largely favorable, but where growers are contending with a labor shortage as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. 

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.