Fruit Industry Partners Join Forces to Strengthen Farming Resilience in Chile’s Aconcagua Valley

ACONCAGUA VALLEY, CHILE - Chile’s Aconcagua Valley is an important production region for avocados, table grapes, citrus, cherries, and other fresh produce for markets around the world. But the long-term resilience of production in the region is increasingly under pressure.

Over the past 15 years, average flows in the Aconcagua River have been approximately 50% below historical levels, while groundwater levels have also continued to decline during this period.

Prolonged drought, higher temperatures, and growing competition for water are placing further pressure on the basin’s water resources and ecosystems. With agriculture accounting for around 74% of water demand in the basin, improving how water is managed on farms is an important part of strengthening the future of agriculture in the catchment.

These challenges cannot be addressed by individual growers or companies alone. This is the premise behind the WAVE Aconcagua Partnership, a market-driven initiative bringing together growers, international fresh produce exporters and importers, retailers, public institutions and technical partners to strengthen water stewardship, regenerative agriculture and climate resilience across the Valley.

The Partnership includes the value chain partners Dole, Nature’s Pride, Westfalia Fruit and Salling Group, alongside the Aconcagua Network, which brings together 15 growers. Collectively, these growers manage approximately 5,000 hectares of cultivated land and almost 11,000 hectares of conservation area across the Valley.

Rather than creating another standalone sustainability program, the Partnership provides a platform for companies and growers to collaborate pre-competitively on shared challenges. This includes improving water management and regenerative agricultural practices on farms, developing practical transition plans for growers, sharing knowledge about what works under different production conditions, and engaging with public institutions on hurdles that extend beyond individual farm boundaries.

In July, Partnership members came together in Chile for their annual field visit, providing an opportunity to see progress first-hand and jointly determine priorities for the next phase. The visit highlighted that growers in the Network are already testing and implementing a range of regenerative agriculture and water-management approaches. To support this transition, the Partnership has developed a Regenerative Agriculture Guide and a monitoring framework, which will inform the development of tailored transition plans for participating farms. Water footprint assessments complement this work by helping growers to identify inefficiencies and informing improvements in irrigation and farm management.

Farm visits demonstrated how growers are adapting their production systems to increasingly challenging conditions and experimenting with practices that can improve soil health, biodiversity, water efficiency and overall farm resilience. For example, one grower is trialing nano-drip irrigation, which uses more frequent, lower-volume irrigation to improve soil moisture while reducing water and energy use. At the same time, field discussions highlighted that action on individual farms, while essential, needs to be complemented by collaboration across the wider catchment.

The discussions reinforced the value of coordinated private-sector action in strengthening farm-level efforts. They also highlighted the importance of engaging strategically with water authorities and other stakeholder groups whose decisions shape water management across the Valley. One example is the participation of the Partnership in the ‘mesa hídrica’ or water roundtable of Aconcagua. These exchanges help connect farm-level experience with catchment-level decision-making, while creating opportunities and channels to share knowledge and explore how evidence generated through the Partnership can support more informed and coordinated action at catchment level.

The Partnership is now moving towards a stronger implementation phase. The coming phase will focus on turning farm assessments and lessons from existing pilots into clear priorities for each grower, while strengthening shared monitoring and expanding collaboration on water stewardship beyond individual farms.

For companies sourcing fruit from Aconcagua, collective action offers an opportunity to strengthen the resilience of an important sourcing region while supporting growers more effectively. By pooling knowledge, relationships and resources, companies can reduce effort duplication, direct investment towards locally identified priorities and address risks that no single business can solve on its own.

For the wider fresh produce industry, Aconcagua offers a practical example of how growers, buyers and other stakeholders can move beyond individual sustainability programs towards coordinated action on shared water and climate challenges at catchment level.