PRICE SLUMP MAKES
PRICE SLUMP MAKES
PRODUCERS SEE RED
Ever wondered where
cochineal, the bright-red
food and cosmetic colour,
comes from? Welcome
to the worlds biggest
cochineal beetle farm at
La Joya, Peru, where
Susie Emmett found the
same problems of adding
value to a commodity
product that worry
UK producers
ONE slice with the shining blade and the thick cactus leaf is off. Two quick strokes with the brush bound to the other end of the knife and the grainy dust on the leafs surface is swished into the waiting box. The harvest from that leaf complete, the woman labourer throws it across to rot in the space between rows of cactus and moves on to the next plant.
Whats being harvested is the tiny dusty-white female cochineal beetle that parasitises the prickly pear cactus. It contains a high proportion of carminic acid which is processed into rich red carmine dye.
World demand for natural red colouring is rising by 15% a year. Carmine is used in a wide range of foods from meats to sweets, as well as in cosmetics and pharmaceutical products. The Canary Islands, South Africa, Mexico and Chile are all exporters of carmine but the majority of the worlds most popular natural red comes from Peru where it has been in use since ancient times.
The vast cochineal farm in La Joya, several hours drive outside the southern Peruvian desert town of Arequipa, is an incredible sea of green in the otherwise totally barren landscape. It was established by the Peruvian company Agroinca which has a diverse range of natural-based enterprises.
60,000 plants/ha
With 125ha (300 acres) of irrigated cactus already in production and plans to double that in the near future, this is the largest cochineal farm in Peru, and probably the biggest in the world. A crop density of 60,000 cactus plants/ha is considered ideal.
In the steady desert heat it is possible to raise cochineal all year round. The 120-day production cycle begins when each mature cactus leaf is infested with mature females, each laden with as many as 500 eggs.
The young cochineal nymphs crawl up the leaf. Males have wings so they can mate with as many females as possible in their short four-hour lifespan. The wingless females bite into the leaf, lose their legs and stay sucking sap from the cactus until, aged about three months, their cargo of eggs is mature and they are swollen with carminic acid. "Farming cochineal like this means we can produce consistent and high quality carmine with a very high colour rating," says farm manager Juan Hernandes. The company has recently set up its own plant to process carmine.
Farmed cochineal contributes only a tiny proportion of the 850t of carmine that Peru exports each year. Most of it is still gathered by hand from the wild prickly pear cactus that grows thickly on the mountainsides in central Peru.
Rural families
As many as 400,000 rural families depend on cochineal for their livelihood. After hours of work scouring the hillsides finding and collecting mature females – it takes as many as 140,000 beetles to make 1kg – the collected cochineal are left to dry until they have a purple-grey, gritty appearance. In this form they are ready to sell on to the many traders and dealers who supply the carmine processing factories in the capital.
Presently, for both wild and farmed cochineal producers, these are tough times. The mid-1990s saw prices reach $80/kg (£55/kg) but now the price for premium dried cochineal has fallen from $10/kg (£7/kg) to as little as $7/kg (£5/kg).
On a hillside above a deep gorge where the road from the coastal capital cuts up through foothills to the central highlands, cochineal-gatherer Monica Ensisso Romero looks out over the centuries-old cacti that her family has tended for generations. "The price is up, then down, then you can find no one wanting this," she complains. More than 600 miles away in the south, the comment from the intensive farm is the same. "Its not a good business now," says Agroincas Juan Hernandez. "But we have to feel sure that soon things will turn around for us."
The cochineal industry in Peru is not just hoping for improved value for the raw material, it wants to ensure the country adds as much as value to the product before it is exported. The big colour-buying companies based in Europe and North America seem to prefer to buy the raw material and then reap the rewards for processing it themselves before selling the colorant on to the food and other industries which rely on it to colour their products.
At the Biocon processing plant quality controller Elizabeth Carmelino shows examples of powdered carmine. "We used to mainly sell powder," she explains. "But now we are working to get closer to the end-user and develop a wide range of highly specialised, ready-to-use liquid dilutions."
Above:The 120-day beetle production cycle begins with cactus leaves being infected with mature females.
Above: Harvesting the cochineal beetles from the prickly pear cactus. Left: Farm manager at La Joya is Juan Hernandes, who says cochineal prices arent good at the moment.