Every year in November, Chilean cherries start a wild rush to China, cherry flight express, fast boat non-stop rush to China, the purpose is to put the Chinese market containers during the Chinese Lunar New Year. According to Rabobank's latest industry research report "Southern Hemisphere Cherries, Export Growth Trends and Challenges", Chilean cherry exports will increase by another 25% in the 2022/23 season, reaching 447,000 tons (about 90 million 5kg boxes). It should be known that the global cherry trade volume in 2019~2020 is only about 454,000 tons.
All thanks to the successful marketing in China by the Chilean Cherry Exporters Association, which has triggered a Chilean cherry planting boom, in recent years about 5,000-6,000 hectares of plantations in Chile have been switched from low-profit fruits (apples, etc.) to cherries, thus expanding the cherry planting area. In 2020, Chile's national cherry planting area was about 630,000 mu (42,200 hectares), in the 2021/22 season, Chilean cherry planting area reached 44,000 hectares (about 660,000 mu), and in the 2022/23 season, according to the US Department of Agriculture, Chilean cherry planting area will reach 52,000 hectares, about 780,000 mu. Cherry production will increase to 465,000 tonnes, up 19.2% from the 2021/22 season. It is increasing at an average rate of more than 10% almost every year. Why Chilean cherries have been running wildly, crushing most of the main sweet cherry producing countries and becoming the fastest growing country in the world's cherry industry, is almost all driven by the huge demand of the Chinese market, of course, this is also due to Chile's unique advantages in the field of cherry production.
Now, some of their advantages are really incomparable to us at present.
First of all, the unique southern hemisphere geographical location and natural time match our anti-seasonal supply and demand. New Year's Day and Spring Festival are the most important festivals of the year in Chinese, plus the blessing of long holidays, people spend a lot of money. At this time, only a small number of greenhouse cherries were on the market for domestic cherries, which could not meet the demand, which was a rare market gap for Chilean cherries. This is almost difficult for us to fill.
Secondly, Chilean sweet cherry varieties and technologies are not generational differences with developed countries. The Chilean cherry industry has close ties with new variety cultivation institutions such as the United States, Canada, and Europe, and the planting community has frequent exchanges with them, and varieties and technologies can be authorized for planting in the first time. And this point, our domestic information in this area often lags behind, in terms of varieties, the current planting is mainly 2 and 3 generations of cherry varieties, such as Mei Zao, even red light, early big fruit, pioneer, Samit, etc., and the Labins we planted are completely different from foreign countries due to impure varieties.
Third, they are large-scale planting. Our planting scale is too small, difficult to professionalize and standardize management, and cannot form economies of scale. The important premise of large-scale planting is the scale of land, however, whether in terms of fruit policy or population, regional advantages have great difficulties. There are about 2.2 million farms in the United States, and the average area has increased from 1,062 acres to 2,428 acres, of which 2% of large farms account for 37% of the volume. According to the statistics of our Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, although the number of family farms, farmer cooperatives, enterprise farms and state-owned farms on the mainland has exceeded 3 million, more than 99% of the farms are in 200 mu to 500 mu. And the orchard is smaller, more small-scale production of several acres or even a dozen acres. Because of the small scale, the level of agricultural mechanization is low, and because of the small scale, it also leads to low professional knowledge and operation management level of personnel, and the level of input is also very low, which together lead to a generation difference between the overall development level of the fruit industry and the United States, Europe and even Chile and other fruit producing countries.
The last point, which is also generally overlooked, is the central role of industry professional associations.
Take the Chilean Cherry Exporters Association, founded in 1935 as a non-profit trade organization representing Chilean fruit growers and exporters, with members including more than 350 Chilean fruit companies. These companies account for more than 90% of Chile's fresh fruit exports. For every box of cherries exported through the Cherry Committee in Chile, five cents go into the following year's marketing budget. Since 2016, at least $5 million in marketing expenses have been spent on China each season, accounting for more than half of the global promotion expenses. The main roles of the association include:
1. Fruit positioning and cognitive promotion: Chileans position their cherries as mass consumer goods, and look at slightly higher or moderate sales and prices. The Northwest Cherry Association initially designated it as a "luxury" product in the Chinese market, and later began to emphasize family concept and quality of life according to the consumption habits of Chinese. Market positioning is mainly based on its own product characteristics and consumption in the country where it is located, and accurately position the market image of its own fruits in the country where it is located.
2. Market development and promotion: Carry out publicity and promotion activities in the countries where the market is located, including hiring key figures to give presentations, such as the United States has hired U.S. Ambassador to China Gary Locke, Chile hired their Ambassador Louis Schmidt to do publicity. In addition, industry associations regularly carry out publicity and publicity activities, which have a great impact. For example, in 2019, the Cherry Committee of the Chilean Fruit Exporters Association used 24,638 cherries to set the Guinness World Record for the "longest fruit queue".
(Guinness Record campaign for cherries held by Chilean industry associations, picture from the Internet)
3. The association has the ability to control goods for members: the association should have the ability to effectively avoid vicious competition between exporters to protect the overall interests of fruit practitioners. For example, the Chilean Fruit Exporters Association has done a timely job of controlling goods, and the association adjusts the delivery speed of Chilean ports in real time according to the dynamics of overseas markets. All association members can check the latest import and export status of different fruits on the official website, and adjust their shipment progress accordingly.
The highest stage of development for trade associations should be the unified brand marketing stage in New Zealand. Taking kiwifruit, or kiwifruit category, as an example, New Zealand has developed to the point where the entire kiwifruit industry is integrated to create the only export brand, Zespri, and sells it in the world market as the only brand.