Boosting NW Fruit

Boosting NW Fruit. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Fruit Grower Report.

Now that Congress has passed those free trade agreements a lot of producers are looking forward to seeing a bit of a boost in sales. Bruce Grim, Executive Director of the Washington State Horticultural Association.

GRIM: Well it will certainly help exports because as I understand it the Panama/Columbia tariffs on cherries, apples, pears disappear immediately. There’s more of a phase out in Korea and probably the Korea one is the one that requires legislative work in their own country before it becomes law.

The Korean agreement is not completely a done deal yet because of that.

GRIM: But it will definitely have a positive impact on the flow of exports to those countries. It will be very beneficial to our cherry, pear and apple growers to have those tariff removed right up front. Either way it’s a benefit to us.

The 2011 apple crop is expected to be down about 5% and mainly due to the long, cold, wet spring we had so a boost in exports would be a very welcome thing.

GRIM: Overall the news on the apple front going back to the U.S. Apple Outlook Conference in August I believe this apple crop in the U.S. is only scheduled to be about the 18th largest apple crop that we’ve had so we’re not looking at numbers that are exceedingly difficult from a marketing standpoint. The market is starting off very strong, movement is very good, pricing is quite solid at this point but we are coming into a situation with the pipeline is frankly quite empty so we would expect strong fruit sales at this point.

That’s today’s Fruit Grower Report. I’m Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.