On April 18 the Argentine president, Mauricio Macri and other high-level officials led a ceremony launching the first shipment of lemons from Tucuman to the US under a new deal.
The area of Tucuman is responsible for producing 90 per cent of the Argentina’s domestic lemons and can now export their crop after market access to the US was granted in August last year.
Exports are capped at 30,000 tonnes annually and can be delivered to the US’s northern East Coast ports.
The last time lemons from Argentina had been granted access was some 17 years ago in 2001, which president Macri has worked hard to regain.
A key reason for the loss of Argentine lemons was bacteria known as cancrosis, which was accused to have been found in the country’s lemons by California growers. This accusation had been proven false, and now the page has been turned on the longstanding issue.
Argenti Lemon was the company that carried out the first shipment of lemons, weighing in at 30 tonnes.
