📊 Citrus, Age, and World Trade

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Today's charts:

1. Exploring lime and lemon production and etymology 🍋

2. Mapping out the entire region’s trade with the world 🚢

3. What’s the median age in your country? 👶👴

Make sure you check out the comment of the week at the bottom!

Agriculture 🍋

Sour Power: LatAm Countries Among Top Lemon Producers

Let's start this story about lemons and limes by clarifying some confusion: Generally speaking, lemons are 'limas,' and limes are 'limones' in Spanish. As native Spanish speakers, this has always been a significant source of frustration. It appears that somewhere in the evolution of language, someone messed up.

Both English words, lemon, and lime, are derived from the French word "limon," a generic term for citrus fruit. If we examine the Spanish use of those words, it seems closer to its ancient Arabic origins. 'Limón' comes from the Arabic "līmūn," and lima comes from "līma." In English, whoever started using the word lemon to describe the yellow variation of the citrus (🍋), in our estimation, wasn't in touch with the word's true origin.

The fruit's harvesting itself dates back first to India — still the world's largest producer — and then to the Middle East and Europe sometime in the second century AD, during the time of Ancient Rome. In southern Italy, you can visit the Cedar Museum in the beautiful region of Riviera dei Cedri.

Christopher Columbus himself brought the first lime seeds to the Americas in his second expedition, planting them in present-day Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Those seeds are the ancestors of what is now a massive industry.

Today, the Americas produces almost as much of the fruit as Asia (only about a 10% difference). Mexico has been leading the charge, making up 36% of the continent's output, and since 1961 has grown its yearly yield by 24x, becoming the world's second-largest producer.

Trade 🚢

Latin America's Trade Balance, Visualized

If you can best understand a region by its trade partners, then people who love Latin America understandably like to look abroad. All of the world’s largest economies — the United States, China, the European Union, Japan, India, Canada, and the United Kingdom — are represented when looking at both regional imports and exports.

In the case of the two largest of these, over $1T worth of goods and services were imported and exported in 2021 between Latin American countries and China and the United States. Specifically, Chinese trade with Brazil and US trade with Mexico form a sizable bulk of this commerce, as the former is powered by commodities and the latter strengthened through considerable North American economic integration.

There are also some other interesting trade partners to observe. Germany, which is Europe’s industrial powerhouse and a country of just 80M people, saw two-way trade with Latin America reaching nearly $60B in 2021. Powered by imports of German manufacturing, this figure represents almost double the total bilateral figure seen between Latin America and the continent of Africa, which has a population of over 1.2B people.

Within Latin America itself, regional trade topped over $165B—not bad, but a far cry from the figures seen heading to either DC or Beijing. For a region of over 650M people, deepening the commercial links between major local economies such as Argentina, Chile, and Colombia is critical towards the region’s long-term growth and development. This will lead not only to better jobs and opportunities staying in the region, but also increased cooperation and integration politically.

After all, the region saw a global trade deficit of roughly $13B in 2021, most of which was tied to China. This obviously isn’t the end of the world and countries can absolutely run commercial deficits (see: the US and most of the developed world). But as Latin America develops and comes into its own, being able to move from a region which exports raw minerals and imports finished goods towards a more sustainable and value-added exporter will lead to better jobs, better growth, and better lives for the region’s citizens.

Demographics 👶👴

From Guatemala's Youth to Puerto Rico's 'Elderly': How Old Are Latin Americans?

Let’s talk demographics.

There’s a traditional logic we see worldwide in which people tend to get older and live longer in wealthier countries, bringing the median age up in these countries. Whether through jokes that the average Italian is of retirement age, or that richer regions more generally look to migrants to keep their economies running, it’s expected that countries further along the development spectrum tend to see higher median ages.

In Latin America, this tracks—for the most part.

Puerto Rico leads the region here by 2021 figures, with the US territory boasting a median age of 44 years that puts in good company with developed European countries like Spain and Germany (and ahead of the mainland US, actually!). Of the countries that follow it in beating the world median of 30 years, some are unsurprising, such as the developed and relatively prosperous democracies of Uruguay, Chile, and Costa Rica. Others – like Cuba or Brazil – may prove more surprising, owing to either their domestic instability or economic concerns.

On the flip side, below the world’s median, we see many countries we might expect. The average Guatemalan, for example, is just over 22 years old, while the average Honduran is just over 23. This puts these countries in the company of developing North African and South Asian states such as Egypt and Pakistan. Notably, none of Latin America’s countries are on average as young as major emerging economies in Africa such as Nigeria or Ethiopia. This may sound good, but there is a bit of a catch.

See, for many of these massive emerging markets the relatively young age of their citizens is a boon, not a downside. While fighting youth unemployment can be difficult, having millions of young, capable workers to power industrialization is vital. Given where Latin American countries such as Argentina and Brazil find themselves today, they’re demographically beginning to reflect developed countries even as they continue to have the income and per-capita wealth of developing countries. Which could be a problem.

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That’s all for this week 👋

Want more?

The comment of the week talks some history about Uruguayan wine. In response to our chart about Uruguay’s productivity on LinkedIn.

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