In this installment of the ‘Agronometrics In Charts’ series, Cristian Crespo F. 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.

This week we're going to take a historical tour of the prices and volumes of Peruvian blueberries in the U.S. market.

Peru went from exporting a total of 70,399 metric tons (MT) at the beginning of last October, to exporting 112,078MT on the same date this year, showing a 59 percent increase. For the third consecutive season, the country is projected to be the largest blueberry exporter in the world, displacing Chile.

Focusing on the North American market, if we look at the graph below we can see that the growth of blueberry imports from Peru by the U.S. show up 4,500 percent in six years from 2014 to 2020.

That said, there are several reports in the market that indicate that the growth in the market is stabilizing, with less or a total stop to new hectares being planted. In the coming years, volume growth will come from production efficiencies in orchards that are maturing.

Historical volume of Peruvian blueberries in the U.S. market (KG)

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

Referencing the following graph, we can see that in week 41 Peruvian blueberry shipments reached their all-time high for a week with 8,495,928 kilograms. We are waiting for what might happen in week 42 when the USDA updates the fruit volumes that entered and expectations in addition to what could happen in the coming weeks.

Weekly volumes of Peruvian blueberries in the U.S. market (KG)

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

The graph below helps us to see the seasonality of the different origins of blueberries in the U.S. market. Peru competes mainly with Argentina, Chile and Mexico, but the most striking thing is to see how Peru has been adjusting its season (advancing) so that is higher volumes arrive earlier than Chile and Mexico to the North American market.

The window still coincides with Argentina, but the country's volumes aren't too high.

Peru's blueberry season in the U.S. market (KG)

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

Without a doubt, this increase in Peruvian blueberry volumes has had an impact n conventional blueberry prices, pushing them down. In week 42, the average price of non-organic blueberries was around US$5.62 per kilogram, a 38 percent decrease year on year as shown in the following graph.

Blueberry prices in the U.S. market (USD/KG)

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

We will have to pay attention to what happens in the coming weeks with the volumes of blueberries coming from Peru.

To end this article we would like to announce a new tool that the Agronometrics platform has made available to users: the ability to filter fruit volumes that reach the U.S. market according to "Transportation Mode".

For example, the following graph shows the form of transportation in which blueberries arrive in the North American market. If we look, blueberry transport by ship and truck has had an upward trend represented mainly by the volumes that arrive from Peru and Chile (ship), Mexico and the U.S. (truck) while the transport of blueberries by plane (mainly Argentina) has seen a downward trend over the years.

Historical volumes in the U.S. market, by means of transport (KG)

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

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.