Moving Apples

Moving Apples. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Fruit Grower Report.

We’ve all heard about the impact the port slowdown has had on agriculture in a broad sense. Rebecca Lyons, Export Marketing Director for the Washington Apple Commission talks about it in greater detail.

LYONS: Certainly there’s no doubt that this has really impacted us in terms of the amount of volume that our shippers have been able to move in particularly into Asia which is heavily dependent on those west coast ports. We don’t really have any alternatives.

There are other ways to ship goods but don’t work so well financially.

LYONS: Before we started to really see the impact of the slowdown our numbers for shipment into Asia were up over 50% versus the same time last season and of course our crop this year is 30% higher than last year and looking at the latest number from the last two weeks we are only 5% above where we were this time last season.

This has given other apple producing countries a foot-hold in the marketplace.

LYONS: This year with the impact of the Russian ban on agricultural products from not only the United States but also the European Union so they of course were looking for other outlets for their apples and a lot of them looked to Southeast Asia which normally we would be able to supply.

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