The man who made Peru the largest exporter of a fruit that hardly existed in the country

Until a few years ago, Peru hardly produced any blueberries.

Today it is the largest exporter in the world and agricultural companies from all over the world are investing in the country to participate in a boom with no end in sight.

“When we started, they were barely produced and today Peru has become the mecca for blueberries,” Carlos Gereda, founder of the company, told BBC Mundo. Inka berries and reference in the production of these fruits in the South American country.

He was the pioneer, the first to discover the potential of his land as an area for growing a fruit that didn’t grow there and launched himself to exploit it. He is the great architect of the explosion of recent years.

This is his story.

It all started in Chile

From his office in an office tower in the Magdalena del Mar neighborhood of Lima, Gereda recalls that his project began in 2002, after a trip to Chile by some of his father’s friends, the very country that pushed Peru out of the regional market. . .

“I was studying Engineering and Business Management at the time, but I was a farmer at heart, because my parents were farmers in Chincha and my father discovered through some friends who had traveled to Chile how successful the blueberry industry was there,” he says.

After traveling to Chile himself to see it for himself, Gereda embarked on an adventure not many people believed in. “The literature said blueberries couldn’t be grown in Peru because there aren’t enough cold hours,” he recalls.

in agriculture It is known as the cold hour after the hours when the temperature does not exceed 7 degrees Celsius. In Peru this only happens in parts of the Andes highlands, but producing there was not an option.

“The logistics are very difficult there, because it is a very rough area and there is little access,” explains Gereda.

“The big farms are on the coast and I knew our industry had to be able to produce there to be profitable.”

But the arid Peruvian coast, largely desert, did not invite optimism.

Then the search began for a variant of the plant that could be produced in the temperate environment of the Peruvian coast.

It was necessary to find a variety of shrubs of the genus Vacciniumthe plants from which blueberries are extracted, which are able to reproduce and produce in the dry and inhospitable environment in which Gereda dreamed of setting up her business.

“In 2006 I started looking for plants to bring to Peru, but I was surprised that they had to be ordered from the United States or Chile and that they took two or three years to arrive, and they were also very expensive. “

Convinced that his project required production of the plants in Peru, Gereda obtained more than 10,000 plants of 14 different varieties from Chile to test them in Peru.

He then started a project in collaboration with the Institute of Biotechnology (IBT) of the National Agrarian University of La Molina to clone them in vitro by meristem reproductiona method by which new plants can be made from a plant tissue called a meristem.

It is a method that has become common practice in recent decades to obtain healthier crops or crops with specific characteristics.

Thus, two parallel paths were opened. While Gereda tested the 14 Chilean varieties on his family’s land in Chincha, the IBT scientists in the lab looked for a way to propagate them in vitro.

In 2008 came the long awaited Eureka. “The IBT scientists informed us that they had found a way to reproduce them in vitro and I verified that four of the 14 Chilean varieties worked well alone.”

The following year he set up his company and started supplying four farms who started growing blueberries with his plants and eventually verified that the best results were obtained with the variety biloxione of the four Chileans who have been the driving force behind the Peruvian blueberry revolution in recent years.

“For Peru to become a player in the global market, it was essential to have fruit between the end of August and the beginning of December, because no one else in the world had it at that time, and that’s when the variety really shined.” biloxiGereda explains.

Blueberries and Peru, today

Today Inka’s Berries, the company founded by Gereda, has grown considerably.

It produces the plants with which it supplies the main players in Peruvian agricultural exports, as well as its own blueberry crop, which it ships to the European market, mainly to Germany.

It has crops in four parts of the country, with 2,000 hectares of cultivated land and 600 permanent employees that can increase to 3,000 when the season starts.

Many others followed in his wake.

Peru has become a magnet for foreign capital to invest in blueberry cultivationand companies from the United States, Australia, Spain and other countries have established themselves in land where no one before Carlos thought they could grow.

The competition is now so fierce that the price of a kilo of blueberries in the country has fallen to historic lows.

And what was once an inconvenience, the temperate climate of the Peruvian coast, has become a differential advantage, as Peru can continue to produce in the summer months, when its Chilean competitors cannot due to the high temperatures that reach your country.

With more than 261,000 tons per year, Peru has become the third largest producer in the world, after China and the United States, and the largest exporter, with the United States as the most important customer.

According to the latest annual report of the International Blueberry Organization (IBO), Peru earned more than 1.2 billion dollars in 2021 from the export of this berry.

Although production growth is forecast to continue, the past few months have not been easy for those, like Gereda, who live on blueberries in Peru, due to the political conflict that has arisen after the fall of former president Pedro Castillo and the protests against the government of his successor, Dina Boluarte.

“The industry has been hit hard because many fields have had to stop their export work. I agree that everyone has the right to protest, but the rest also have the right to work and bring food for their children,” he affirms .

For Gereda, her company’s success is much more than just a business project. “One of the greatest satisfactions I have in life is having contributed to the beginning of this industry.”