India Opens Ports Again

All of India's ports have been reopened to apple imports after a bit of a debacle late last year. Chris Schlect with NW Hort Council says this is good news for the apple industry.

SCHLECT: They had shut down their apple imports to one port of entry, an ocean port and obviously India is a large and major population center and has many different ocean ports and entry points so getting this back open should facilitate trade and is good news.

Schlect explains how the shutdown occurred.

SCHLECT: There was some activity in September and then over the last several months they've been discussing how to resolve this issue but that was a decision by the Indian government and of course the apple exporting countries of the world protested, including the United States but also other countries, pointed out that this was a violation of the World Trade Organization rules and they had a lawsuit brought by their own importers

He points out that this wasn't a complete shutdown.

SCHLECT: There was product sent through the one port so it wasn't a complete closure but it certainly disrupted trade in the last couple of months and Mark Powers was over there in December and I think that helped a little bit in the process of working between our government and their government and pointing out the problems. Again this litigation and the international pressure all came together and we have a good result.

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