Jaime de Pablo Valenciano

The Spanish Tomato Export Sector of the Almeria Region: An Econometric Approach

This article analyzes the current situation of the tomato export sector of Almeria, the principal exporting province of Spain. First, a critical view is presented relating to the internal organization of this sector; the most important problem observed is the marketing system which is atomized, heterogeneous and significantly difficult for raising funds from the individual partners in order to begin innovative projects. Second, to establish whether this area is losing market share, the sector is compared to the other principal tomato suppliers of the European Union (the Netherlands, Morocco, and other areas of Spain). The analysis shows Almeria has defended its market share in the most recent years. Finally, the most influential variables in the commercial process are analyzed by a tomato export model that shows there are substitution effects of the Almerian tomato for products from others origins, mostly the Netherlands.

Analytical model for the global consumption of tomatoes- The Spanish case

This article presents the current situation of tomato consumption worldwide. This paper proposes a new methodology for classifying countries into four main markets, ‘the sustainable market’, the ‘effort market’, the ‘vulnerable market’ and ‘the declining market’. Each market has its own producing and consumption trends and its particular strategies for producing, exporting, distributing and logistics strategies. Finally, this paper identifies the most influential variables in the commercial process of producing, consuming and exporting of Spanish tomato.

South Africa’s competitiveness against its main competitors in the market of pears imported by the EU28

ABSTRACT This paper presents a quantitative analysis of the competitiveness of pear exports from South Africa (SA) to the European Union (EU) market against competing countries such as Argentina, Chile and China. This paper uses the Constant Market Share (CMS) methodology, which enables one to analyse export changes in order to quantify the competitiveness factor, and its separation into general or specified competitiveness. This analysis is performed for two periods – 2002–2007 and 2008–2013 – in order to test if the 2007–2008 global economic and financial crisis had a significant impact on the South African pear trade. Thus, the main objective of this work is to investigate if SA lost competitiveness during these years in relation to its competitors. The results show evidence that, before the global economic and financial crisis, the structural effect of the SA exports contributed most to the sales growth of pears to the EU, and a general competitiveness effect contributed to a lesser extent. After the crisis, exports continued to grow but at a slower rate, and that the composition of the contribution to the sales growth to the EU changed completely. From 2007 onwards, specified competitiveness was the main contributor to the export growth of SA pears, even counteracting the negative, post-crisis impact suffered by the the exports’ structural effect.