TRADE AND MARKET I NG potato sector of Argentina Processing industry should open up the D riving through the area (SEBA) to the southeast of the Argentinian capital Buenos Aires, I see hour after hour of a landscape with immense, undulating open fields in which millions of hectares of rough grass, cereals, soy beans and maize set the scene, but if you look carefully, you also see potatoes here and there. In this area, crop farmers grow approximately 27,000 hectares of potatoes, which is 40 percent of the total potato production. The growers in this area cultivate 90 percent of the demand for the processing industry. In this part of Argentina, the growers harvest their potatoes from January through June. Other important growing areas are 1,200 kilometres to the north, in Cordoba. In that area, the harvesting of mainly table potatoes takes place from August through December. The situation is virtually the same in Mendoza, 1,200 kilometres to the west. In addition, there’s another small cropping area for early potatoes in the region around the more northerly Tucomán, which fills the gap between the harvests in SEBA and Cordoba. Overall, there are eight hundred potato growers in this country who, together, cultivate 80,000 hectares of potatoes. What is remarkable is the fact that there are many small growers and only a limited number of big professional businesses. However, the big farms have hundreds and hundreds of hectares, which means a big difference in the professionalism of the cultivation. There are three large foreign processing companies active in this country. In addition to the Dutch Farm Frites, these are McCain and Pepsico. Of the annual potato production of over 2 million tons, these companies process 470,000 tons of potatoes into chips and crisps with 75 percent of the processed quantity being exported. The biggest buyer is Brazil. The largest proportion of potato production from Argentina goes to the fresh market 14 Potato World 2016 • number 4 Pagina 13
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