In early August, the sandy hills along the coast of La Libertad, in northern Peru, are laden with bluish-purple fruit. The blueberry harvest is just weeks away in a desert thought inhospitable to berries just over a decade ago. Now, the arid region is placing Peru at the forefront of the global blueberry market.
As he walks through the bushes, barely five feet tall, Álvaro Espinoza leans in, his eyes widening at so many blueberries—and the gargantuan size of some.
“Even the gauge is useless,” says the agricultural engineer, trying to measure one with a keychain featuring different circular-sized openings. The berry doesn’t fit into the largest one-inch hole.
Espinoza was among the first to experiment with growing blueberries in Peru about fifteen years ago, when this fruit, native to the Northern Hemisphere, was barely on the country’s radar.
“People called me crazy,” he recalls. Since then, the growth of Peru’s blueberry industry has been as meteoric as Bitcoin.
The South American country went from planting only a few hundred acres of blueberries in 2012 to the world’s top exporter of fresh blueberries for the last five consecutive years.
Carlos Núñez is the owner of a laboratory that researches new varietals of blueberries. Berries can be bred for taste, size, and different environments.
“Technological and scientific advancements are driving the growth of blueberries in Peru, with scientific companies genetically enhancing the fruit to thrive in the region’s challenging desert climate,” says Nuñez.
The hunt for a desert-loving blueberry
Inspired by the success of their Chilean neighbors, Peruvian entrepreneurs began exploring a local blueberry market in the early 2000s. But finding the right variety took years of trial and error—Espinoza tried to set up a nursery but failed. He now works in sales for Planasa, a Spanish company that develops tastier and better growing berries.
In Peru, the challenge was to overturn the conventional wisdom that blueberries needed a minimum number of chill hours—temperatures below 45°F—to thrive. While the Andean highlands met these conditions, the rugged terrain posed significant hurdles for an industry heavily reliant on manual labor and an infrastructure of advanced irrigation systems and packing plants.
The small town of Malverde has grown with the burgeoning berry industry. Blueberry farm workers often rent nearby houses to remain close to their jobs. In the background, the blueberry fields of Camposol, the first company to export Peruvian blueberries, can be seen.
Workers from a major multinational blueberry company are transported between different areas of the farm on a company bus.
The goal was the coast, where irrigation megaprojects and large agro-export companies were already established, says Carlos Gereda, a pioneer in the industry and founder and CEO of Inka’s Berries.
He was the first to identify a blueberry variety that could cope with the temperate Peruvian shore, where the Humboldt Current meets the Andes, creating desert-like conditions.
Born into a farming family, Gereda began traveling to Chile in 2006 to learn about blueberries. On one of his trips, he brought back 14 varieties to test in Peru’s desert. It took him two years to find the right one, named Biloxi. With this variety identified, he invested $300 to start a company that became a Peruvian blueberry trailblazer.
Breeding the rugged blueberries of the future
Today, Peru’s blueberry fields span over 49,000 acres—slightly larger than the size of Brooklyn—and the country ships more than twice as many blueberries abroad as its closest rivals. Over half of sales go to the United States, where Peru supplies four out of 10 fresh blueberry imports.
But last year, this boom faced its first setback. A major heat wave driven by an El Niño event hit Peru’s northern coast, including La Libertad, the heart of the blueberry industry. Temperatures soared 40°F above average, making it the country’s warmest winter in over 60 years. The heat devastated some blueberry varieties, and production plummeted by 25 percent.
“Agriculture is like this—nothing is certain, and everything is yet to be proven; you have to live it,” says Gereda. “There are moments when out of nowhere, a powerful climate event forces you to rethink everything.”
This experience, along with the expectation of rising temperatures due to climate change, has accelerated efforts to develop new, genetically improved blueberry varieties that can thrive in even hotter climates.
To create these resilient varieties, scientists cross parent plants, germinate the seeds, and evaluate them over years to select the best individuals, which are then cloned and multiplied in vitro. Another goal in this genetic race is to produce ‘jumbo’ blueberries—making inch-long blueberries the norm—to boost yields and meet market expectations.
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Last year, Inka’s Berries released two new jumbo-sized varieties, Alessia and Abril, named after Gereda’s nieces. Both are tropicalized varieties that flourish without cold temperatures.
Blueberries measuring more than 18 millimeters in diameter are classified as “jumbo,” a premium size highly valued by the market, especially in China.
A farm worker transports blueberries by wheelbarrow during the harvest season. In 2012, Peru had just a few hundred acres of blueberries; now the country has over 49,000 blueberry fields.
The blueberry varietals growing in Peru’s coastal desert help provide a year-round supply of blueberries. They’re ready to harvest during off seasons in Chile and the United States.
Blueberries are native to North America and, like many fruits, typically require a certain amount of cold weather in order to grow properly.
Several Peruvian blueberries require no such “chill hours.” This helps blueberries grow in this desert climate and may supply climate resilient blueberries that can grow in regions where temperatures are rising.
Prosperity leaves harvesters behind
Despite the initial challenges, Peru’s coastal microclimate has proved advantageous for high blueberry yields and year-round production. Foreign and domestic companies—drawn by tax incentives and a cheap labor force—quickly made money by selling the fruit at a premium during the off-season in Chile and the U.S.
Even accounting for last year’s extreme weather, Peru sold a record $1.7 billion worth of fresh blueberries overseas. Today, blueberries are the country’s second-biggest crop after grapes, helping fuel a 13-fold increase in total annual farm exports since 2000.
Yet, the living conditions of blueberry harvesters haven’t kept pace with the industry’s success. “While the companies continue to grow, we’re exploited on minimum wage [$275 per month],” says Julisa González, a picker at Camposol, the largest blueberry exporter. Her daily pay barely covers the cost of three packs of blueberries in New York City.
Though a few large companies dominate Peru’s blueberry industry, an emerging number of medium-sized farmers are entering the business.
Among them is Emilia Luján Pérez, a 76-year-old farmer preparing to plant blueberry bushes on her two-acre plot in Virú, a coastal province of La Libertad. In eight months, she hopes to harvest her first tons of blueberries to meet the ever-growing global appetite.
“If I need more land,” Pérez jokes, pointing her walking stick at the arid mountains behind her property, “I’ll take over the hills.”
Despite record high temperatures, last year Peru exported $1.7 billion worth of fresh blueberries. Just under half of the fresh blueberries sold in the U.S. are grown overseas.
A woman in Ica Province, Peru, waits outside her home for a water delivery. The region is known for its water scarcity yet remains a hub for growing thirsty blueberries. In some neighborhoods of Ica, residents have access to water for only a few hours each week.
The Don Ricardo Blueberry Company in Ica, Peru, is experimenting with strategies for using less water to irrigate blueberry bushes. Water used to irrigate blueberries is then reused to irrigate grapes.
Emilia Pérez Luján is dedicating part of land to growing blueberries. She’s part of a growing trend of small farmers in regions such as La Libertad, Peru, who are hoping to cash in on Peru’s blueberry boom.
