Rio Negro Province
Alto Valle: 82% of Argentina's apples/pears but producers collapsed from 9,000 (2005) to 1,605 (2023). 80-100K tons abandoned 2024. By 2026: existential crisis for family fruit farming.
Río Negro Province dominates Argentina's deciduous fruit production—82% of national apple and pear output from the Alto Valle corridor shared with Neuquén. The 120-kilometer valley's family farms growing Williams pears and Deliciosa apples created an export industry "that goes all around the world." Yet 2024 revealed this industry in crisis.
The producer population collapse quantifies the decline: from 9,000 producers in 2005 to just 1,605 by 2023. Rising production costs, urbanization of agricultural land, and aging workforce pushed small-scale farmers out. CAME estimates 80-100,000 tonnes of fruit abandoned in 2024—staying on trees, rotting, falling—as retail sales dropped 10% and export volumes contracted 24.6%.
The "perfect storm" hitting Río Negro producers combines macroeconomic dysfunction (inflation, currency instability) with structural agricultural decline. Some producers report the last quarter of 2024 so bad it depressed 2025 opening prices. Fresh apple production for 2024/25 projects at 488,000 metric tons (slight increase), pears declining to 655,000 MT—modest recovery after severe contraction.
The Alto Valle faces existential competition: rising land values from non-agricultural uses, labor costs inflating faster than fruit prices, water access increasingly contested. The family farm model that built the industry may not survive modern economics.
By 2026, Río Negro tests whether government intervention can stabilize the deciduous fruit industry, or whether the Alto Valle transitions from agriculture to alternative land use.