More On Trade Mission

More On Trade Mission. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Fruit Grower Report.

Mark Powers, VP of the Northwest Hort Council was a part of the recent Washington Governors Trade Mission to India and S. Korea. Some issues came up back in January regarding exports that might have closed the Indian market to U.S. products.

POWERS: I was there meeting with importers, meeting with the Indian government to find out what the status currently is and we were reassured that trade would not be affected while the government was analyzing these comments and that at some point in the future there would be a response and we would take it from there.

That should mean at least for this season we should have an open market for apples and pears in India.

POWERS: The other one on cherries is trying to get a systems approach in place for cherry exports to India. Right now India requires fumigation with methyl bromide and that is significantly impacting our ability to ship to that market. The importers are very worried about the risk of taking in fumigated fruit and one of the challenges with India is there are no direct flights from the U.S.

He does say there is one from New York City.

POWERS: But otherwise you’ve got a very complicated logistical chain, the fumigation and the lack of cold chain in India really hurts our ability to tap into that market. So we were there to try and push that initiative forward and we were able to meet with the plant quarantine people that are responsible for looking at that proposal.

More tomorrow.

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