The green gold of the Andes, how Peru quietly became a fruit basket for much of the world

When most people all around the world picture the distant sources of the fresh fruit that fills their local supermarket shelves, a narrow strip of arid desert running along the Pacific coast of South America is very rarely the first thing that springs immediately to mind. Yet over the past couple of decades or so, Peru has quietly and steadily transformed itself into one of the most important suppliers of fresh produce anywhere on the entire planet, faithfully feeding tables in dozens upon dozens of distant countries.

A desert that feeds the world

Perhaps the single most astonishing part of this whole genuinely remarkable story is the rather unlikely and inhospitable landscape in which so very much of it has actually taken place over the years. Much of Peru's long coastline is, by its very nature, an extremely dry and relentlessly sun baked desert, a harsh place where rain almost never falls at all and where little of any real value would ever seem able to grow without a tremendous amount of human ingenuity and sheer effort.

Through the clever and remarkably large scale use of modern irrigation techniques, however, vast and sprawling stretches of this once barren and seemingly empty land have gradually been turned into astonishingly productive green fields. Precious water, carefully channelled all the way down from the distant and towering Andes mountains, now allows local farmers to cultivate an impressive variety of valuable crops, almost entirely free from the usual nagging worries about unpredictable rainfall.

The reign of the little blue berry

If one single product has somehow come to perfectly symbolise this entire extraordinary agricultural rise, then it is surely the wonderfully humble and rather unassuming little blueberry. In a genuinely remarkable achievement that few would once have predicted, Peru has over recent years climbed all the way up to the very top of the global rankings, becoming the single largest exporter of fresh blueberries to be found anywhere in the entire world today.

The sheer speed of this particular ascent has been nothing short of breathtaking to behold for everyone involved, with the total value of blueberry shipments soaring by around half in just the first part of this single year alone. Industry experts often credit this stunning success to a clever and deliberate focus on growing many different varieties, which allows Peruvian producers to satisfy a very wide range of tastes while still comfortably commanding premium prices in the market.

Green gold on every table

Yet the humble blueberry is really very far from being the only shining jewel in the crown of Peru's booming and ever expanding agricultural sector these days. Another popular fruit has grown so genuinely valuable and so vitally important to the national economy that locals have long since affectionately taken to calling it green gold, and that fruit is, of course, the wonderfully creamy and endlessly popular avocado.

When it comes to this particular and much loved crop, Peru now stands proudly as the second largest exporter to be found anywhere in the entire world, trailing only just behind its much larger and more famous neighbour to the north. Peruvian avocados are now carefully shipped out to around seventy different markets right across the globe, gracing dinner tables absolutely everywhere, from the busy kitchens of Europe to the fine restaurants of distant Asia.

Billions from the fields

When all of these many different crops are finally added together into one single figure, the sheer overall scale of the money now involved becomes genuinely rather difficult to ignore or indeed to overstate in any way. In just the first six short months of this year alone, the country's total agricultural exports reached the truly impressive figure of several billion dollars, marking yet another steady and welcome increase on the already strong performance of the previous year.

Interestingly enough, a good deal of this very latest growth appears to have actually come not so much from simply growing a great deal more fruit, but rather from the noticeably higher prices that Peruvian produce has recently been able to command in markets abroad. This strongly suggests that the wider world has genuinely come to value both the consistent quality and the sheer reliability of exactly what these hard working Peruvian farms are so reliably able to deliver.

A boom that reaches the mountains

One of the most genuinely heartening aspects of this entire sweeping success story is that its considerable economic benefits are thankfully no longer confined solely to just a handful of very large companies down on the fertile coastal plains. In more recent times, a determined and conscious effort has been carefully made to bring smaller scale farmers from the high and remote Andean regions into this thriving world of international trade for the very first time.

For these smaller and often far more remote mountain producers, suddenly gaining real access to such lucrative foreign markets can genuinely be a life changing opportunity, meaningfully strengthening the often fragile rural economy in areas that have too frequently been quietly left behind in the past. It also clearly demonstrates how the considerable rewards of such a boom can, with enough careful effort and planning, be shared far more widely across an entire society.

Clouds on the horizon

For all of its very genuine and undeniably hard won success over the years, however, this flourishing agricultural sector is certainly not entirely without its own looming worries and very real potential dangers lying just ahead on the road. Experts have recently begun to warn quite openly of the distinct possibility of a strong and deeply disruptive weather event developing along the coast, something that could seriously threaten production across several of the most important growing regions.

Such a sudden and dramatic shift in the usual established weather patterns clearly has the obvious potential to badly damage delicate crops and to seriously upset the carefully managed growing calendars that so many farmers rely upon very heavily indeed. Even so, given the truly remarkable resilience and the constant spirit of innovation that this whole sector has already shown so many times before, there remains every good reason for a cautious but genuine optimism about its long term future.