China Opens To Apples
China Opens To Apples. I'm Greg Martin with today's Fruit Grower Report.Good news from China. Over the weekend, close to twenty years after the initial request was submitted to China, USDA's APHIS and China's General Administration of Quality Supervision Inspection and Quarantine, have agreed to a regulatory framework to expand apple access from the United States to China. Danelle Huber, International Marketing Specialist with the Washington Apple Commission relates what this will mean to apple producers in the northwest.
HUBER: We're hoping it means that we get to double our last record exports into China. We had access for Red's and Golden's back in 2011 we started off, 2011-12 and in August 2012 they kind of shut their doors on us. At that point we were exporting three million plus cartons into China and that was just with Red's and Golden's so we are hoping to, at the very least, double that with full varietal access.
China is the largest apple producing nation and as part of the deal, China will also have access to the U.S. market.
HUBER: They mainly grow Fuji's but yes, the last I looked they produced almost 1.9 billion boxes of apples last year.
It will take a couple of months to see apples start moving provided the port issue can be cleared up.
That's today's Fruit Grower Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network of the West.