West Coast Ports Critical for U.S. Ag Exports

At the opening session of the 2015 Potato Expo in Orlando on Wednesday, Euromonitor International’s Government and Trade Relation Manager Matthew Tripodi said that one of every three acres of U.S. potato production is destined for an export market and that if the West Coast port troubles are not solved —- it may cause a 33 percent decline in U.S. potato product exports.
Tripodi: “One of the key exporting states, the leading ag exporting state is California and of course Oregon and Washington are great producers of inputs of agricultural industry. Along that coast servicing markets in Asia pacific and other key destination markets for us. Those markets are now going under serviced because of labor disputes, equipment problems a ll sorts of things that now need to be resolved. If you think about having an $144 billion global business and all of a sudden the distribution system for that business breaks down there are horrible and catastrophic consequences for that. So the quicker we get it resolved the better for the industry, the better for United States and the better for every ag producer in the United States.”