Ten years ago, some Peruvian farmers started growing blueberries for export. They wanted to compete with growers in Chili for “profits.” Imported berries sold in the U.S. in the cold months when they don’t grow there command high prices.
In 2013, Peruvians earned about $17 million in sales. In 2023, their income from exporting blueberries was $1.7 billion. A lot of Peruvian families and workers were better off. Today, Peru exports more than its competitors, reports The Economist:
Innovation made this happen. Shades of Adam Smith and creating the pin factory to make more pins and sell them for lower prices so that users of pins, those who wore the clothes they made, factory workers and factory owners, all saw a rise in their well-being.
Peruvians took from inventors in the U.S. new varieties of blueberries which did not need chilly winters and which could thrive on Peru’s coast. By 1922, the yield of the typical Peruvian blueberry field was nearly double the global average, giving Peruvian growers and their customers a cost advantage.
The provision of public goods also lifted production and private wealth creation – tax breaks and irrigation megaprojects to bring coastal desert land into cultivation.
But as often happens with free markets, competitors join the party. “Colombia, Morocco, everyone is growing blueberries now,” said one farmer in Peru.