Sweet
plans
With the good prices fetched by the fruit in two years,
the producing region expanded the planted area
and should increase supply as of 2019
Main lemon
orchards are
concentrated
in the region
of Itajobi,
in São Paulo
One of the leading lemon producers in
the world (fifth largest in 2016) and leading
exporter, Brazil has expanded by 12% the
supply of the fruit over the past five years
(from 2011 to 2016), according to data re-
leasedbytheBrazilianInstituteofGeography
and Statistics (IBGE), and this supply should
increase even further as of 2019, when the
new and bigger lemon tree orchards enter
their fruit-bearing stage. On 2017, by virtue
of climate and phytosanitary problems, the
size of the lemon crop dropped and prices
soared, thus encouraging the expansion of
the orchards and, at the same time, lemon
l
CHALLENGES TO FACE
Europe is the leading foreignmarket for Brazilian lemons, and it is competingwith
other markets, especially Mexico, to the point that Brazil and Mexico account for up-
wards of 90% of all European imports. The leader of the international market, none-
theless, lost ground over a 10-year period (2006 to 2016), from74% to 57%, according
to the previous source, while Mexico increased its share, from19% to 36%. Formigoni
cites challenges to be faced, like quality and price oscillations.
Abpel president Afonso Castellucci, in turn, observes that in the market in general
there are huge price differences, which is not an ideal situation, and in his evaluation,
reasonablepricesmayrangefromR$20to25(27.2-kilogrambox)kg).Theentity,inspite
of sectoral organization difficulties and public reply, is particularly fighting for certifica-
tion, production and transport control, inwhich it intends tomove forward, besides the
expansion of the production volume anticipated for the coming years. In 2018, in spite
of the lackof complete informationdue to theabove factors, supplywill still be limited.
exportswere kept under control.
In the region of Itajobi, in the North-
west of the State of São Paulo and lead-
ing lemon producing municipality in the
Country, the Association of Lemon Pro-
ducers and Exporters (Abpel) maintains
that in 2016 and 2017 around 300 to 400
thousand lemon trees were planted, by
virtue of the remunerating prices at home,
“as good as, or even better than prices
fetched abroad”. From January to No-
vember 2017, according to the Center for
Applied Studies on Advanced Economics
(Cepea), of the Luiz de Queiroz , a division
of the University of São Paulo, the average
price of the Tahiti variety was up 178.4%
from the prices in the previous period.
The numbers of the IBGE also refer to
huge production increases in 2016 in the
São Paulo municipalities of Itápolis, Fer-
nando Prestes and Monte Alto, up up-
wards of 80% from the previous year. The
State of São Paulo is the leading producer,
with nearly 70% of the total in the Country,
followed by Bahia (12%) and Minas Gerais
(7%). The interest for the fruit soared be-
cause of the better prices fetched by it and
equallybecauseitisaveryappropriatecrop
for small-scale farms, withmost of the pro-
ducers falling into this category, with hold-
ings of 6.2 hectares on average, and the to-
tal number of this type of farms amounts to
2,200 in the regionof Itajobi, comments Ab-
pel president Afonso Castellucci.
The official ascertains that there is amar-
ket for the fruit, both at home and abroad.
So much so that in 2017 there was difficul-
ty meeting the export needs, which, for this
reason, dropped slightly (8.75% in value and
3.5% in volume). Even so, the lemon is one
of the most exported fruit by Brazil. Accord-
ing to information released by Ivan Formi-
goni, from Foodnews, the fruit is getting in-
creasingly popular in Europe, both as food
seasoning and as an ingredient inbeverages,
and the trend is for sales tocontinue soaring.
Inor Ag. Assmann
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