Agriculture in Chile encompasses a wide range of different activities due its particular geography,climate and geology and human factors. Historically agriculture is one of the bases of Chile'seconomy, now agriculture and allied sectors like forestry, logging and fishing accounts only for 4.9% of the GDP as of 2007 and employed 13.6% of the country's labor force. Some major agriculture products of Chile includes grapes, apples, pears, onions, wheat, corn, oacustoms policies Chile is free from diseases such as Mad Cow, fruit fly and Phylloxera, this plus being located in the southern hemisphere (having quite different harvesting times compared to the Northern Hemisphere) and its wide range of agriculture conditions are considered Chiles main comparative advantages. However, the mountainous landscape of Chile limits the extent and intensity of agriculture so that arable land corresponds only to 2.62% of the total territory.
Chiles principal growing region and agricultural heartland is the Central Valley delimited by theChilean Coast Range in the west, the Andes in the east Aconcagua River by the north and Bío-Bío River by the south. In the northern half of Chile cultivation is highly dependent on irrigation. South of the Central Valley cultivation is gradually replaced by aquaculture, silviculture, sheep and cattle farming.
