The Peruvian outgoing mango is prepared this way

From the most humble acres in San Lorenzo Valley among the districts of Las Lomas and Tambogrande, to the complicated operations at Paita seaport.

 

By Freddy Lamadrid Zapata

 

TAMBOGRANDE, Peru – My job began on December 13^th, 2006, and finished on January 22^nd, 2007, due to the low mango  production because it didn’t blossomed on time during the season 2006-2007by climate factors. After that, the rains didn’t allow the trucks to transport it from the croplands to the packing company easily.

 

The rookies understood why we were dismissed. As the veteran workers said, when there is low production, the new ones are affected, and that was the most convenient because it was not going to be fair that oldest people to be fired.

 

I hope to come bak to Diagro someday. It was the first time I worked with a mango exporting company. Before, I worked with the Ministry of Agriculture between Palpa and Nazca, Ica Department. In San Lorenzo Area, Piura Department, I worked in rice harvest.

 

I went with much knowledge in theory about mango, but that was not enough because in the university, there is more theory than practice, and I faced a new reality. The difference bases upon…

• I learned to differentiate the kinds of mangoas Kent, haden, Tomy Atkins, etc.
• The Tommy one was actually easy to differentiate but Kent one and Haden one were almost similar. I differentiate them by the blush (reddish marks on their shells) and their shape. Well, at the moment you watched them, it was already a little easier to differentiate.
• I learned almost all the steps that mango has to follow to be exported since reception until shipping.
• It must pass through a hydro-thermic treatment to eliminate plagues as the fruit fly (Anastrepha fraterculus or Ceratitis capitata) or diseases as oidium, anthracnose, etc.

 

Learning a new language

I ever Heard about pallets but I never had seen them, sincerely. They said me this one is for this client, and this one for another client, they spoke me about levels, palleting, banding, calibers, kinds of mango, discard mango, tracking. I don’t like to say it’s a process because it’s not a true process, and the mango doesn’t input and output, and those are steps to follow. That’s what I think.

 

My job at Packing Area consisted in ordering to bring-in pallets for clients in turn to pack that day. I had to see how many drawers were to process per client, and depending on that, bringing-in the number of pallets. Then, I tracked the mango from the cropland to the exporting place, but in this case, the tracking was done from the packing company to the exporting place, and I used some forms what I sent in the end of my workday as my report.  Those ones were done per every client.

 

This tracking job consisted in controlling the pallets of every client, and putting an ID which had the name of the client, the kind, and the number of boxes that the pallet carried out. Mostly, it was worked with 21 levels giving a total of 252 boxes, in other words, each level had 12 boxes and multiplied by the number of levels that were 21, gave a total of 252 boxes.

 

The tracking code consisted in 11 digits, for example: 025 07 254 369.  The three first digits mean the number of days of the year, the two following ones are the current year, the three following ones the highest lot of mango, the lot bringing-in more mango drawers in other words, then the three following ones are the pallets number sequence followed per client, and also stamping every box with its own tracking code.

 

My job was also the pallets to be well set, that I insert well one under another and the mango to be well set in the box because if it was very high, it was not a good palleting yet. It had to be well set before banded, that was the second step.

 

After the palleting, banding was putting four cornerers to the pallet, then putting them a band [leveler that avoids lateral malformations] every two levels and a half, or every three levels, that have a total of eight bands per pallet. It had to stay well banded, that any pallet highlighted or glowed. Once banded, it went straight to the freezer chamber depending if the fruit was in its optimal temperature to enter, that was mostly 27°C to 29°C [ 81°F to 84°F]. For the mango not to maturate with the heat, it put at a temperature of 9°C to 11°C [48°F to 52°F].

 

Then, it passed to shipping where it was transported to a container, that may hold 22 pallets, those were transported to Paita seaport for being carried by sea, later, in the case of the container I was tracking, to the U.S.

 

Exporting for Americans

I was also in charge of quality control for the U.S., that also had its form. But I did it a draft first, I transcripted it that was addressed for quality control. This is done per client and kind. First, it was determined how many drawers had been processed, how many discard drawers had, and how many approved drawers had. Then and depending on that, it proceeded to calculate the total discard percentage and next the percentage per every cause of discard.

 

In this case, the causes were: thrips, cresas, oidium, fruit fly, anthracnose, black spots by lack of water, malformations, shocked drawers, overmaduration, lack of weight, field latex, recent latex, etc, and what had most percentage was the most significant ones, in other words, I might pretty care of the causes that were significant.

 

It was a pretty experience to work in Diagro. Thanks for giving me the chance to be part of this beautiful family. I hope pertaining to you again someday.

 

Freddy Lamadrid Zapata is an agronomic engineer by the National University of Piura. Aldo Palacios in Tambogrande contributed to this story. The opinions of the autor does not necessarily represent FACTORTIERRA’s neither the company’s mentioned on the story. Neither this influenced in the final version of this feature.