From Childhood Hardships to Farming His Own Lands

COATEPEC, Mexico.- Some of Besai Arizmendi’s winters smelled of old guava scent, an aroma that in the world of this municipality of the State of Mexico resembles pain for the families who work the lands, since it’s cheaper to let the fruit rot in the trees than to spend time and work in harvesting them to sell them at low prices.

“The dreams of most Mexican farmers depends on the estimation of how much the product will be worth in the local market and, when there is excess supply, their crop is worthless,” says Besaí, currently 33 years old, with a distant memory of the regional market where his father grappled between tumbles of misery and prosperity.

With winning streaks that sometimes had the price of guava, the patriarch Arizmendi supported his son Besai’s career, who was interested in international trade to seek “a safety valve” to the fruits that made him “suffer and enjoy” in the same proportion during childhood and youth.

That valve is the exportation- he concludes from the office of the Secretary of Agriculture of the State of Mexico (Sedagro), where he takes care of procedures that will export fruits and vegetables to California, New, York, Texas and Illinois with his company Mexico Flavored Fruits.

Besai has a tired and happy appearance altogether. Who would say that farming businesses are also a symbol of success?

The rural areas of the State of Mexico, like most of the municipalities of the country, were taken aback when the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) came into play.

Unlike their counterparts in the North, like Sinaloa, Sonora and Baja California, that are contemporary leaders in exporting red tomato and meat to the United States with, or entities of the West like Michoacan and Jalisco with avocados and berries, these rural areas did not prepare quickly to meet market requirements beyond their borders.

Hence, the State of Mexico still occupies the 19th place as an agricultural exporter among the 36 states of the country, although it recently rebounds with different bets on people like Besai.

He was the first entrepreneur in the southern region interested in exports. First, he worked with his guavas until he got sales up to 800 tons annually. From there he continued with six more products: manzano pepper, cucumber, eggplant, tomatoes, peppers, and pineapple.

Today four projects in the area want to follow in his footsteps. They are competition, but the sun shines for everyone and I am very proud that they want to go further.”

The Rough Road to Quality

The sun beats down on the cellars and greenhouses of Mexico Flavored Fruits that are flanking the road leading from the South to the municipal head. With a little water and fertilizer, fruits and vegetables sprout here with just throwing a seed on the ground. However, at the same rate, lust bugs that attack them also reproduce.

“We must be very careful they [bugs] do not pollute the fruit, especially the whiteflies,” warns Ricardo Angulo, Safety Manager of the company, while touring the warehouse where products are received, classified, cooled, packed and labeled.

Last week a newly launched machine released manzano peppers classified according to size and color in order for a group of packagers to delicately place them in fine boxes that will go to Texas. The company knows that any error in quality is expensive. In fact, Fruits of Mexico started exporting to the American Union when Japan closed the door in its face in 2009.

Selection of Fruits

At that time, Besai traveled to Asia to open the market to his guavas. The Japanese were very interested until the H1N1 influenza crisis frightened them and they canceled the contract. “I was told that a newly formed company could not guarantee safety,” says the owner.

It was the month of June. In six months the guava production would be at its maximum potential and Besai did not want to come back to his childhood nightmare of seeing the fruits rot on the trees. So he went to as many government agencies as he could; from Pro Mexico to Sedagro until they advised him to “certify” his products for export.

The certification is based on the quality and health of the product. Farmers in Mexico have to start paying attention to these issues: the fields must have bathrooms, warehouses should be disinfected. That is, no insects or rodents.

Fruits of Mexico obtained the “certification” required to demonstrate that its products were free of whiteflies and met all safety requirements with hygiene protocols, such as preventing workers from entering the selection area with open-toed shoes, long nails, with earrings or jewelry, makeup, perfume or food.

They should also wash their hands with soap and sterilizing gel. And then, they have to pass over a disinfectant mat.

At first workers saw that as an exaggeration, but these are the demands of the international market.

Union Makes Force

Miguel Herrejón walks through the greenhouses of Mexico Flavored Fruits with long strides. As head of day laborers, he must arrange the vegetables in this section done to perfection to be exported and this involves a complicated process, from removing the smaller fruits of tomatoes to overseeing the pollination process, which is done by shaking a long wooden stick.

Herrejón is 26 years old and has a great capacity of leadership to control several dozen people as deftly as all management areas of the company. “The great merit of Besai is his ability to organize all types of workers,” says Jose Ramon Albarran, director of marketing at Sedagro.

It’s been a little less than five years since the State of Mexico began to look more to the field, technology, training and farming industries, a sector that had lagged despite the potential of the lands with the food crisis the United Nations anticipates, seeing America as an ally for its climate and fertile soils.

“The contribution of agriculture and livestock to the gross domestic product (4%) is very low considering the global demand and network of 11 agreements of the Free Trade Agreement that Mexico has,” says economic analyst Jose Santana.

The main advice of Besai for agriculturists who want to export is very simple: “team up.”

He could not meet the high demand with his 320 hectares of crops by himself. Therefore, he became allies with 200 producers and trained them to achieve quality standards with engineering support from his team and his own father, the farmer who did not give up, even when sometimes he had to leave guavas in the garden, uncut .

Exports After NAFTA

• Since the signing of NAFTA in 1994 to date, trade grew 452%
• The trade balance is in favor of Mexico
• Out of the $21,172 million dollars of commerce, $15,806 were through exports from Mexico
• Mexico’s main exports to the U.S. are beer, tomatoes, chilies and peppers, avocados, sugar cane and coffee
• The products that the U.S. sends to Mexico are corn, milk, fructose, boned meat, pork, canned and cotton
• 90% of the avocado imported by the United States comes from Mexico
• The main problem for export in Mexico is the intermediaries who carry the main gain