Page 5 - Asoex Sustainability Report

Use of Agricultural Inputs
Promoting the proper use of agricultural inputs, such as pesticides and fertilizers, is of great importance to the industry, because of their incidence in produce safety and their potential environmental impact.
The export fruit industry has constantly worked in this respect, through the regular publication of a Pesticide Schedule since 1989. This publication, which is currently electronically issued and posted on line, enables any grower or technician to consult the Maximum Permitted Residue Limits (MRLs) of any agrochemical used with the main fruit species, as well as the required number of days without application before harvest by destination country. Important goals have been thus attained, and Chile is one of the countries with the less residue detections in produce in all international markets. At the domestic level, there has been no fresh fruit withdrawals from the market either.
The various GAP protocols, speci cally GlobalG.A.P. and ChileG.A.P., contain a considerable amount of control points in
aspects intended to assure the proper use of pesticides and fertilizers, from purchase to post application management. Compliance with the basis of Integrated Pest Management (IPM); i.e. monitoring, prevention and control, is part of the major mandatory aspects, so as to ensure that all certi ed growers apply this concept to their decisions on the use of pesticides.
In this sense, it must be noted that 3,379 orchards in Chile hold certi cates issued by independent accredited certi cation companies according to the stated GAP Protocols. This is equivalent to 185,905 ha (460,000 acres), which is to say 62% of the nation’s fruit planted area (including 99% of all exports to the USA and European Union). This serves as proof of the constant concern of Chilean growers with making a careful use of these products, compared to other countries that do not required GAP certi cations.
Training in this matters is essential for attaining such good results. It is continuously provided to industry workers who wish to obtain a certi cate as Competent Pesticide Applicators and an Of cial Certi cate issued by the Agriculture and Livestock Service (SAG), the government plant health authority.
CLIMATE CHANGE (Measurement, Adaptation and Mitigation)
In recent years, fresh fruit exporters and growers have implemented measures for adapting to new climate scenarios, including for instance, the following activities:
• ASOEX is a founding partner of, and an active participant in, the Consortium for a National Agro Climate Network, which manages over 280 agricultural weather stations, so that growers have access to information on weather behaviour in the entire country and are able to take preventive measures in cases of related risks, for an increased productivity of their companies. (See: www.agroclima.cl.)
• Another adaptation measure is evident in the increasing addition of varieties that adapt to new climate conditions, such as cherry and blueberry varieties requiring less hours of cold.
• Besides providing on line information, this network prepares monthly reports with forecasts of weather effects on production, and generates warning messages, sent by mobile phone and email, whenever unusual events that may affect production are forecasted.
The export fruit industry has also implemented measures for climate change mitigation. Besides the aforesaid energy management and fertilizer ef ciency practices of recent years, projects are underway for precision agriculture and using drones with various sensor systems as support for an agronomic management of fruit trees.
Another mitigation measure adopted by the industry is the intensive use of irrigation techniques involving less water consumption, as afore mentioned.
• There has been an upward trend in recent years for placing blankets (“roo ng”) in orchards
for the protection of crops with high risk of undergoing damages from frost or unforeseen rain, particularly over cherry trees or blueberries plants.
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