The Latin American poultry industry is characterised by a wide variety of domestic preferences and business traditions. Consumer demands differ greatly per country and influence production and processing. Besides a focus on domestic markets, more and more companies are trying to explore export markets.

Latin America (LA) is a huge continent embracing 42 different countries and an area of 20 km2 on which around 600 million people live (about 10% of the world's population). Farming is the main economic activity, responsible for the production and exports of a broad selection of food products, including grains. Because of friendly climatic conditions, vast extensions of arable land, abundance of fresh water, plenty of disciplined and cost-competitive workers and growing grain volumes, the LA poultry meat industry emerges. From 2000 through 2006, LA's annual chicken meat production grew from 12.3 million mt to 16.6 million mt, representing 34.36% growth. (In the same period the world's poultry production grew some 22.35%.) The turkey industry experienced a similar development, with a growth of 42.06%. (In the same period the world's turkey production grew only 12.04%.) After Brazil, responsible for 51% of the LA 2006 production, Mexico is the largest country in LA's meat production (14.1%). Together with Argentina (7.0%), Columbia (4.6%), Venezuela (4.5%), Peru (4.4%) and Chile (3.1%), they were responsible for 89% of LA's chicken meat production in 2006, while the residual 11% came from te remaining 35 countries.

 

Source: World Poultry - Vol. 24 No. 6 2008 (an extract)

 

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