Eyeing Fresh Fruits and Vegetables

Eyeing Fresh Fruit and Vegetables. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Fruit Grower Report.

Rebecca Weber, Washington State Department of Agriculture’s International Trade Specialist will be part tour guide this next week as a delegation of buyers from Southeast Asia will be in the state. Their mission is meet with growers and distributors of fresh fruits and vegetables.

WEBER: The main focus will be apples, cherries, pears, stone fruits, and then we have three buyers who are looking at vegetables - potatoes, onions, and then a few other specialty things.

Weber says there has been some interest in the berry market.

WEBER: We do have a few folks who are interested in berries and we’re not including a berry visit in this particular mission but they will have the opportunity to talk about that with some of the suppliers they will meet.

The delegation will be in the state on Monday and Tuesday. The group will then be moving on to California. Weber says this delegation is extremely important for Washington products.

WEBER: We consider 6 countries to be in Southeast Asia which is Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, and Indonesia and aggregating together that’s our third largest market for Washington State. And that’s one of the areas we’ve seen growing quite a bit for food and agricultural products across the board so I think there’s quite a bit of emerging opportunities there. There’s a few other markets that we may look to expand to at some point in the near future.

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