KORUS Affect on Cherries Part 2

KORUS Affect on Cherries Part 2. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Fruit Grower Report.

The Korean Free Trade Agreement has gone into effect and BJ Thurlby, President of Northwest Cherries says a lot of growers are excited but there are a lot of questions about the 24% tariff that has been lifted and what that will mean.

THURLBY: Well that’s one of the big questions, does that 24% get passed down to the consumer and that’s really important and we see our industry as certainly trying to get the highest sales prices possible. Korea has been a good market for us so we see that we’re going to continue to sell at prices that return reasonable return on investment to growers.

He says they are hoping from the Korean side that that 24% gets passed down to consumers.

THURLBY: There’s been quite a bit of press in Korea relative to this trade agreement and one of products that showed up on the radar screen in an actual newspaper article was cherries and one of the things that was said was Korean consumers can look forward to a 24% price reduction on cherries. So it’s happening and we hope that is a reality.

Keith Hu, NW Cherries Director for Exports is in Korea.

THURLBY: He’s there and kind of monitoring and setting up programs for the year so as a result of this free trade agreement we’re actually increasing our promotion funding into that market this year because we really think the FTA is going to be a positive difference to the cherry growers here.

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