Storage Issues & Pushing for Trade

Storage Issues & Pushing for Trade. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Northwest Report.

Congress is back in their lame duck session and while things are moving rather slowly some issues are pressing forward and that does include some trade issues. Washington Congressman Doc Hasting, who won reelection, says they are working to improve trade with Russia and open up Indonesia.

HASTINGS: Since Russia now is part of the WTO their are other force there that will hopefully make them comply and we are part of that. I’m going to support the trade issue with Russia. The other issue deal with Indonesia and their restrictions on imports and there has been, for lack of a better word, a partial change in that theatre.

Hastings says they are continuing to try and get the Indonesian ports opened to more U.S. trade.

Well a record apple crop in Washington State is creating some of its own problems. The largest crop to date was 2 years ago with 109 million boxes. This year crop is expect at or above 121-million boxes so storage houses are beginning to have some problems with where to put the crop. Fortunately exports are also very high since the rest of the country did not have much of a crop this year and even large apple producing states like Michigan and New York are looking at buying apples from Washington.

Now here’s today’s Washington Grange report.

(Grange)

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