Brazil imported 34,737 tonnes of frozen strawberries in the seven months through July, up nearly 35 per cent from a year earlier, trade data shows. Egypt supplied 93.5 per cent of that volume at prices that have fallen in every month of 2026.

In Minas Gerais, the country's largest growing region, prices paid to farmers have collapsed.

"In November 2025 I was selling at R$10 a kilo, we cut to R$8 by the end of the year, then to R$7, and now it's down to R$6," said Denis Dias, who farms three hectares in Alfredo Vasconcelos and spoke to Folhapress in April. His own cost, he said, is R$4.50.

Faemg, the state farm federation, cited another grower who sold a fifth of his crop to processors in 2024 at R$4 to R$6 a kilogram (US$0.74 to US$1.11), but placed only a tenth in 2025 and was paid R$1.50. The Cepea/Esalq research centre put small growers' costs at R$8.34 to R$8.51 a kilogram in the 2022/23 harvest, while Egyptian fruit landed in July at about R$3.84.

Minas Gerais is home to about 11,000 smallholders, 98 per cent of them family farms, according to Faemg. Most of their fruit is sold fresh, and the second-grade crop that fails fresh-market standards — between 10 and 20 per cent of output — goes to processors.

That is the outlet the imports have taken. As processors switch to Egyptian raw material, fruit that would have been frozen is pushed back onto the fresh market, weighing on prices, São Paulo state federation Faesp said in August.

Solange de Oliveira Paiva, who grows 140,000 strawberry plants in Ipuiuna in southern Minas Gerais, said the sharpest fall had hit the "factory strawberry" sold for pulp and juice. "The price went from R$17, at the end of last year, to R$8 in February this year. We have to sell at the price of bananas," she told Faemg in March, using a Brazilian expression for selling at a pittance.

Annual imports were no higher than 8,500 tonnes as recently as 2022, almost all of it frozen. Imports reached a record 42,100 tonnes just three years later in 2025, Deral, the rural economics department of Paraná state, said in July.

TARIFF IN FOCUS, BUT NUMBERS DON'T ADD UP

Growers and state lawmakers backing them blame the Mercosur-Egypt free-trade agreement. The tariff burden, however, is light.

Frozen strawberries fall under the accord's basket D, a 10-stage phase-out running since 2017, and reached 90 per cent preference in September 2025. Against a most-favoured-nation duty of about 9 per cent, that leaves a residual of roughly 0.9 of a percentage point — less than one US cent a kilogram — to disappear on 1 September.

The import surge began in 2023, when the residual was still 3.6 per cent.

Prices from other suppliers are similarly competitive. China, which has no deal with Mercosur and pays the full duty, landed its 2025 frozen strawberries at US$1.008 a kilogram on average, just below duty-preferred Egypt's US$1.022.

Argentina, a Mercosur partner paying no duty at all, shipped 95 tonnes at US$1.90.

The bigger shift cascaded from Brussels. On 18 February, Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2026/194 added Egyptian strawberries, fresh and frozen, to the European Union's high-risk list over possible pesticide residues, requiring identity and physical checks on 20 per cent of consignments.

Egyptian exporters told trade publication FreshPlaza in May that European demand had been slow while demand held up elsewhere, including in Russia and Latin America, "where regulatory requirements are lower". In August, market sources told the same outlet that EU rejections were "directly curtailing demand and leaving exporters with fewer destination markets".

A GLUT LOOKING FOR A HOME

Difficulties selling to the EU coincide with a glut in supply from Egypt's burgeoning strawberry farms. The country roughly doubled its strawberry crop between 2018 and 2023, to 883,000 tonnes, and more than doubled its planted area, FAO data show. Brazil's crop has held near 190,000 tonnes.

Egyptian frozen-strawberry exports earned around US$672mn in 2025, up 81 per cent on the year, according to industry figures cited by HortiDaily.

"A lot of growers came out of last season very disappointed; many of them reduced their strawberry acreage or left the sector altogether," said Egyptian grower El Sayed El Gohary, who reported a 15 per cent yield loss against a 20 per cent rise in costs.

GROWERS SEEK ANTI-DUMPING PROBE

Brazilian producers are now pressing for a dumping investigation. A March hearing at the Minas Gerais legislature produced three formal requests: an anti-dumping inquiry, mandatory labelling of imported fruit and sanitary testing.

State deputy Maurício, who convened the hearing, claimed Egyptian fruit sells at about R$15 a kilogram at home but is exported to Brazil at about R$7.50, against a Minas production cost he put at R$8.50.

In March, the national agriculture confederation CNA filed a technical note with the agriculture and trade ministries, and Faesp followed in August, seeking permanent monitoring of the imports, a technical assessment and help assembling evidence for a possible trade-defence case. Five months on, no proceeding has been opened.

"Can a strawberry grower wait two years?" said Faemg agribusiness analyst Mariana Marotta, noting that a CNA complaint against Argentine and Uruguayan milk powder, filed in 2024, has run two years without a decision.

On 1 September, the question will come into sharper focus, as Egyptian strawberries reach full preference and the residual duty falls to zero, days before the Brazilian harvest reaches its peak.