Crowned
fruit
The pineapple stands out among
Brazilian fruit, with a vast domesticmarket,
and the planted area is on the rise again
The crown it wears enshrines one of the
threemainandmostvaluedfruitunderpro-
duction in the potent Brazilian fruit farming
business, which ranks second worldwide.
In 2017, should the provisory 2018 esti-
mates confirm, Brazil again harvested an
area totaling more than 70 thousand hect-
ares devoted to pineapples, just like what
had happened 10 years ago, though the es-
timated volume decreased slightly, to 1.7
million fruit. The record harvest occurred in
2015, a total of 1.8 million fruit, very close
to the amount achieved in 2016, when rev-
enue amounted to R$ 2.4 billion.
The area devoted to pineapples, while go-
ing down at the end of the past decade, start-
ed rising again at the beginning of the current
decade, somuchso that theBrazilian Institute
ofGeographyandStatistics(IBGE)wasequally
foreseeing vigorous increases in planted area
in recent periods, possibly reaching 100 thou-
sand hectares in 2016, in accordance with the
organ’s preliminaryprojections. It couldbeex-
plainedby the strongdomesticmarket (which
represents upwards of 99% of the total), be-
sides the chance for the production of juic-
es for the foreign market, according to evalu-
ations based on this perspective and on the
promisingexportsoftheliquidinthatyear.
In fact, judging from IBGE’s consolidat-
Initial estimate
for 2017 points
to a planted
area of over
70 thousand
hectares
ed data, the area viewed as planted for the
2016 crop year reached 69,053 hectares and
the harvested area, 68,699 hectares. For the
year that followed, while therewere still high
perspectives with regard to the planted area,
harvest projections in December 2017 point-
edto70,259hectares,accordingtoSystemat-
ic Survey of Agricultural Production (LSPA),
conducted at that time, which still included
the crop, excluded in 2018 from this type of
survey. Anyway, it represents steps forward,
but back then frustrated by the low produc-
tivity rate, which had been over 26 thousand
kilogramsper hectare since2013.
Keeping a close watch on the crop from
way back, relying on existing official data,
José Souza, researcher at Embrapa Cassava
and Fruit Farming, in Cruz das Almas (BA), as-
certains that in 17 years (from 2001 to 2017)
the production of pineapples in Brazil soared
1.26%a year, resulting froman annual expan-
sion of 0.74% in harvested area and 0.52% in
performance. The variation between planted
areaandvolumeharvestedwas always small:
lessthan0.19%in2014(smaller)andlessthan
5.71% in 2008 (higher), in the period extend-
ing from 2001 to 2016. On the other hand, as
far as the market goes, under observation for
17years,Souzaclarifiedthatthedomesticsce-
nario was the preferred destination for the
fresh fruit, with the share of the external mar-
ketreachinganaverageofonly0.5%.
Sílvio Ávila
46
Exportações de abacaxi
•
PINEAPPLE EXPORTS
Ano
2016
2017
Volume
(Quilos)
3.222.809 4.049.522
Receita
(US$)
1.928.687 2.282.604
Exportações de
sucode abacaxi
•
PINEAPPLE JUICE EXPORTS
Volume
(Quilos)
10.049.920 5.246.948
Receita
(US$)
25.864.161 8.674.916
Fonte: Agrostat/Mapa.
