Peru’s agribusiness sector provided 44% of all jobs related to exports in the highly agricultural country in 2024.
For this statistical report, Agraria Peru cites the Research Center for Economics and Global Business of the Association of Exporters (CIEN-ADEX). CIEN-ADEX’s data shows that annual export-related jobs reached 4,427,921 in 2024, up 15%.
Traditional sectors such as agriculture and mining provided 1,750,131 jobs or 39.5% of all export-affiliated jobs, up 19.9% annually.
Export employment creation by non-conventional sectors such as agribusiness grew 12% year-on-year to 2,677,790 jobs or 60.5% share.
Lion’s Share
It is agribusiness however that tilted the balance among non-traditional agricultural export jobs at 1,947,734 or 44% the total.
Out of these new opportunities, 621,791 or 1/3rd were direct jobs while the rest were either indirect or induced.
This made the sector beat all others in the provision of opportunities around exports. Its only rivals were such non-agricultural industries as textile and metallurgical steel workings.
The agrindustry’s lead owed to high demand for labor input in shipping avocados, blueberries, mangoes and asparagus.
Plantation Crops Buoy Traditional Export Sectors
Although agriculture and other traditional sectors such as mining lagged in job creation, they however did better than in 2024.
Agriculture generated 519,125 opportunities, 11.7% of which export-oriented. The percentage accrued to labor need for processing sugar, coffee and cocoa, among other plantation crops.
Fishing, too, had a field day with the most yearly growth at 97.7% that generated 78,985 jobs.
Thus, Peru’s agribusiness is to thank for the agricultural export value chain of 2024 that generated the country US$11.198 billion. And as the statistics below indicate, this is no small result for the world’s leader in many agricultural exports.
Peru Agribusiness Statistics
Peru’s agribusiness chains have helped insure robust agri-food export value growth in two decades. Agri-food shipments soared from just US$645 million in 2000 to a massive US$10.5 billion in 2023. By 2024, agribusiness was calling the shots in agricultural returns by generating the bulk of the $11.198 billion value of agri-food exports. Traditional agriculture meanwhile generated US$1.227 billion.
Has agribusiness improved agricultural job creation in Peru?
According to the World Bank, Peru in 2023 had 24% of its employed population in agricultural jobs, most non-traditional. Between 2000 and 2023, agribusiness had indirectly helped expand acreage of high-value crops by 200,000 ha. This expansion in turn generated 1 million direct and indirect agricultural jobs.
Which foods or products generate most agricultural revenue?
Agribusiness has partially helped expand the number of exported agricultural merchandise in Peru from 420 in 2002 to over 640 in by 2019. High-value exports include asparagus, blueberries (US$1.72 billion), grapes (US$1.34 billion, 2022), cocoa (US$1.89 billion, 2024), fish (US$1.4 billion, 2024) and plantation crops.