Chile's Wholesale Potato Prices Crash to a Five-Year Low

A sack of potatoes that fetched $24.61 (CLP 22,865) on Chile's wholesale market in October 2024 was worth barely a fifth of that four months later. Data compiled in the February 2025 potato bulletin from ODEPA (Chile) Papas y Tuberculos puts the January 2025 average monthly wholesale price at $5.71 (CLP 5,304) per 25-kilo sack — a 25.8% drop from December 2024's $7.69 (CLP 7,145), and the lowest average monthly price recorded in the last five years. The bulletin ties the January collapse to the entry into production of new-season potatoes from the Metropolitana region, which flooded a market that had been running tight for months.

Consumers felt the same swing, if at smaller magnitude. In the Metropolitana region, the average monthly price at open-air ferias fell 15.7% in January, from $0.96 (CLP 890) to $0.66 (CLP 616) per kilo, while supermarket prices dropped 11.9%, from $2.30 (CLP 2,136) to $2.02 (CLP 1,881) per kilo.

The path to January's low prices runs through a supply disruption several months earlier. The bulletin attributes the October 2024 price spike to a reduction in planted potato area in the Coquimbo region, the country's principal supplier of new-season potatoes, compounded by a delayed harvest there. That delay pushed the price-easing effect of new-season potatoes into November rather than October, and prices did not meaningfully retreat until December and January, when Metropolitana's own new-season crop came online.

The broader annual pattern described in the bulletin shows 2024 tracking 2023's shape but more subdued through the first months of the year, before diverging in May and climbing through June — at one point running 11% above June 2023 levels — then holding in a $13,000-$15,000 CLP per-sack range (roughly $13.99 to $16.14) until the October spike.

Chile's 2024 potato exports totaled $5.75 million FOB, up from $3.9 million FOB in 2023. More than half that value, 50.8%, came from prepared, not-frozen potatoes, with 73% of that category's value going to Uruguay. The bulletin details 587 tonnes shipped to Uruguay in 2024 for $2.3 million FOB at a $3.90/kg unit price, compared with 490 tonnes in 2023. January 2025 exports of this product ran below January 2024 in both volume and value, though the unit price edged up to $4.10/kg overall, and reached $4.70/kg FOB specifically on shipments to Uruguay.

Seed potatoes sent to Brazil, Guatemala and Uruguay accounted for 20.2% of 2024 export value; fresh potatoes to Uruguay, Brazil and Argentina made up 16.5%; and potato flakes to Brazil, Bolivia and Ecuador contributed 11.7%.

Against that export picture, Chile's potato imports in 2024 reached $218.9 million CIF, down 1.8% from 2023. The overwhelming majority, 86.5% of that value ($189.3 million CIF), was frozen prepared potatoes — down 2% in value from 2023 even as volume rose 0.1%, arriving primarily from Belgium (51% of value), the Netherlands (20%) and Argentina (19%). January 2025 imports totaled $17.6 million CIF, down 21.8% from January 2024, with frozen prepared potatoes again accounting for 86.6% of that value.