Walter Detzel, the "Messi" of watermelon, will dispatch 56 tons in bulk to Uruguay in two trucks, repeating the export he opened in 2025 after the deregulation pushed by Federico Sturzenegger.
Between this Tuesday and Wednesday, two trucks loaded with bulk watermelons will leave Juan José Castelli, in northern Chaco, for direct export to Uruguay. In total, they carry 56 tons that, for the second time, will be sent to the neighboring country after the opening achieved last year, when certain bureaucratic hurdles linked to this trade ceased to apply.
The operation repeats the picture seen in late October 2025: Walter Detzel, who is now comfortable being known as the "Messi" of watermelon, again arranged the shipment to Montevideo with the same buyer as last year, with whom he made history after securing from Minister Federico Sturzenegger the elimination of a rule from the 1980s that required the fruit to be bagged and made logistics more expensive. "The markets are out there and we are going out to conquer them," he said in a conversation with Bichos de Campo.
At the start of Javier Milei's administration, Detzel interceded with the Minister of Deregulation to speed up bureaucratic changes in that regional economy. Along with other controls, hurdles fell such as the one requiring the fruit to be bagged for export, which made watermelon exports unviable. The first milestone was the shipment of some 2,500 watermelons grown in Paraje La Toloza to the Port of Barranqueras and from there to Montevideo; then came the grey squash from Salta, which found buyers in Chile. "And now we are ratifying our relationship with Uruguay. This is no coincidence, it is a construction we have been building step by step," Detzel said.
This time, the production that will cross borders belongs to Javier Detzel and his son Luciano, producers from Paraje La Esperanza, in the rural area of Juan José Castelli. "Javier is my cousin, we share the same name, and together with his son Luciano they have been working in watermelon production. For me it is an enormous satisfaction that today they have the opportunity to take their production to another country. Behind this there are countless hours of conversations, work, procedures and coordination. It is not something that happens overnight," said Walter, who led the export process through his company Sandías Castelli.
Beyond the anecdotal value of sending watermelons to Uruguay again, the producers insist that these atomized efforts should build a stable commercial relationship. "We do not want to make an isolated export just to make the news. We want our buyers to come back and for us to be able to offer them more production, more quality and more opportunities every year," said Detzel, who considers that the new order from Montevideo "means a great deal" in that direction. "It means that he trusted our quality, our word, our way of working, and that today he chooses us again. Opening a market is difficult, but consolidating it requires even more effort, responsibility and commitment," he added.
Distributed across two trucks that will leave Castelli between this Tuesday and Wednesday, the 56 tons were in doubt until the last moment because of the effects of the drought that hit the region for more than 40 days, which also pushed local prices up. "We have a Uruguayan buyer but we have no merchandise," the producer had warned days earlier. The rains came just in time in the days before the harvest and, despite low yields, the crop could be harvested to meet the commitment.
Climate is a central issue for the region's activity, where water availability depends exclusively on rainfall because the reserves, located more than 50 meters deep, are saline. Detzel said they are carrying out efforts to import irrigation technology from Israel that allows water desalination. "We have extraordinarily noble land, but we cannot depend forever on rain. We need to incorporate technology and improve our irrigation systems," he stressed.
The producer celebrated the scenario opened by the current government through trade openness and reforms that enable new export opportunities, though he noted the importance of sustaining core sanitary mechanisms. "The State has to create the conditions for trade to flow and the agencies must cooperate with those of us who produce," he added. "We do not want the business to be concentrated in a single company. We want to open up the game, so that more producers have opportunities, can improve their production and reach international buyers. The markets are there. There are buyers interested in our products and we have producers capable of supplying them," he concluded.
