Competitive Global Fruit Export Markets: Marketing Intermediaries and Impacts on Small-Scale Growers in Chile

Abstract — This paper explores the implications of increased competition in global fruit markets for the Chilean small-grower sector. Stagnation in the growth trajectory of such exports has precipitated significant changes in the structure and strategy of the private fruit export company sector. It is proposed that this restructuring discriminates against small growers, whose position within the market has become increasingly vulnerable. To support this idea, evidence obtained from a field study of small-scale grape growers operating in the locality of El Palqui, Region IV is presented. It is argued that increased vulnerability is not simply a function of the inefficiency of diminutive scale per se. Rather, the nature of economic power relations, which tilt heavily in the favour of export companies, form an important explanatory factor in the increasing rate of failure among the fruit growing parceleros. It is argued that the implications of the failure among small growers who have already 'reconverted' is of particular importance. It is proposed that steps re-dress structural imbalances in the market could precipitate productive gains, increase the potential success of small growers attempting to 'reconvert' to fruit production and improve rural equity. If applied to the small scale fruit sector as a whole such moves could help sustain Chile's fruit export sector — an objective which can be seen as crucial to Chile's economic well-being. In this way the argument of free-market purists — that rural economic differentiation which has taken place to date is inevitable and desirable — is challenged.