OLIVE FARMING COMPANIES IN SAN JUAN, ARGENTINA: APPLIED AND REQUIRED TECHNOLOGIES

In the past 20 years, olive growing activity has risen significantly in the country. The Province of San Juan has gone hand in hand with this growth, which has been characterized by strong investment in technology to aim at benefiting from comparative advantages. The global crisis clearly evidenced weaknesses in the sector’s competitiveness. This study is a contribution to overcome this problem. The main objective is to reach a greater cooperation between the structure and human resources offered by the Universidad Nacional de San Juan (UNSJ) and the businesses world to provide solutions to problems related to technological innovation in machinery, products, processes, organization and commerce. This urged that both the already achieved and the required innovations should be known. Hence, exploratory as well as descriptive research was carried out in which both qualitative and quantitative strategies were applied, based on primary (surveys and interviews) and secondary data sources as well. Among the introduced innovations worth mentioning are machinery and equipment purchasing, human resources training, research and development and hiring of machinery/services. The most highly required technologies were: soil and water analysis, pesticides and solvents waste, technical support on cultivation, technical support on quality management, and pre- and post-fruit harvesting analysis in accordance with quality standards. This has evidenced the sector’s utmost concerns calling for urgent action: to improve product performance and to meet quality standards. The realization of this articulation supported by the interest shown by entrepreneurs will contribute to the improvement of competitive factors such as cost reduction, output increase and quality improvement with added value.