Australian Cherry Industry

Australian Cherry Industry

Australian Cherry grower and President of the New South Wales Cherry Growers Association Tom Eastlake shares more about the cherry industry Downunder.
Eastlake: “Growing sweet varieties. Very little sour production in Australia. No Rainier production significantly in Australia. Total production around 18,000 tons — so small globally as well as a percent of Australian agriculture.Very dominantly domestically based, unfortunately, because of an inability to access international markets through loss of existing export markets, through breakdown of government negotiations. So we’ve lost Thailand, we’ve lost Vietnam, and Russia is under an embargo — so we’ve lost that too. And inability to open new markets despite a lot of work done by the Australian cherry industry.”
Eastlake and his five Nuffield Scholar colleagues were touring the States earlier this summer. Eastlake’s focus has been expanding international market access for Australian cherries through the negotiations of phytosanitary protocol. While in China, the Nuffield group learned more about Chinese government’s testing of their domestic fruit market compared to the requirements of international fruit and he had the opportunity to meet with Chinese Quarantine Office hopefully he said will provide future export opportunities for the Australian cherry industry.

 

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