Agri-Food Industry And Agro-Industry Based On Fruit And Vegetables In Chile Up To 1930: Antecedents For A Historical Construction

Abstract

The aim of this work is to detect, compile and systematize those
historical elements of the Chilean industrialization process
that allow us to shape the development and chronology of the
agri-food industry and agro-industry based on fruit and vegetables
up to 1930. A related contribution is the generation of a
register of such firms that were founded before the 1929 crisis,
many of which remained in time by the thrust of European
immigrants who arrived to the country. There are foundations
and evidence to conclude that in the decades of 1840-1850 the
agri-food industry became an economic activity clearly visible,
particularly the production of flour, noodles, cooking oil
and biscuits. By the other hand, dried fruits go back to the Colonial
era, with exports at the end of the eighteenth and during
the nineteenth century. Food preservation via warming and
brining emerged early in Chile, but fruit and vegetables in tin
cannery of industrial scale arises only at the beginning of the
twentieth century. Concentrated fruit juices and vegetables are
a modern phenomenon, but some initiatives to produce natural
juices are also at the start of this century. The agro-industry
based on fruit and vegetables was born and developed at the
shadow of the agri-food industry and its technological advances,
shaping an import-substituting industry which achieved
an important exporter takeoff in the 1980s.

Keywords: Industrialization, food, immigrants, agro-industry
based on fruit and vegetables.