Marcelo Nemirovsky, entrepreneur and director of Pistachos de los Andes, explained how he chose this project and what the cultivation and harvesting process of this fruit crop is like. “In Argentina, there are already 7,500 hectares planted with pistachios. We are still at a small production scale globally,” he stated.
“For the holiday season, we ran out of pistachio stock due to high demand. Now we are harvesting, and in about 20 days it will be available again; at the moment it is in the preparation and processing stage for sale,” the producer said.
Nemirovsky recalled that decades ago pistachio was a rare ice cream flavor and that, since it was produced “mostly in the Middle East,” very little reached the country. He added: “With the shift toward healthier eating, all nuts have started to be consumed more. Pistachio consumption, due to its flavor and other characteristics, has boomed globally.”
The entrepreneur mentioned that his company handles the entire process: “The tree is planted, you wait 5 or 6 years for it to start producing, and once it is harvested there is a productive-industrial process.” “We have a nursery that produces pistachio plants for ourselves and for third parties. Today we have 25-year-old plants that are producing normally (the plant lives around 50 years),” he added.
Among the requirements for pistachios to grow, it needs “1,000 hours of cold and 1,700 hours of heat, which allows the plant to produce; there must be sufficient water of good quality; soil with low salinity; certified seeds; and proper farm management.”
