Chile’s walnut and almonds production and exports in MY2013/14 are expected to increase over the previous year as planted area keeps expanding and new orchards are coming into production. For the outer years, output should continue to expand as a result of improved technologies, replacement of uprooted orchards with improved varieties and a significant increase in planted area.
Walnut production continues to expand but at a slower rate then in the last few years. This expansion is a result of a significant expansion in planted area with new crafted varieties, together with the replacement of old, low production orchards that originated with trees from seeds. Additionally, an
increasing number of producers have adopted improved technologies like pruning and drip irrigation.An increasing use of a chemical called “retain” which prevents the blooms from aborting due to an excess of pollen, has eliminated the alternate bearing effect in walnut production. As a result, we can expect that walnut output will continue to increase steadily with few ups and downs due to an expansion of the new planted area which is coming into production. Although it is a bit too early for a good walnut output prediction, for 2013/14 the industry expects total production to be at the level of over 50,000 metric tons thanks to favorable winter weather conditions Walnuts are planted from the Third Region (Copiapo) down to the Ninth Region (Temuco), with over 90 percent of the crop planted in the central areas, specifically Region Five (San Felipe-Los Andes), the Metropolitan Region (Santiago) and Region Six (Rancagua). Region IV (Ovalle area) has seen the biggest expansions in area planted during the last few years. Total planted area has doubled during the last 6 years, reaching a total of 30,000 hectares. The two main factors for the significant increase in
planted area during the last 3 to 5 years has been a continuous deterioration in the profitability of alternative fruit crops and the good prices and economic returns obtained by walnut producers. An industry source indicated that total planted area of walnuts will keep increasing in the coming years mainly due to the labor shortage which is affecting the whole fruit production sector in Chile, but walnut production can be mechanized and a large number of producers are reportedly switching to walnuts after their table grape orchards are finishing their production cycle and need to be replanted.
