07/16/07 Governor Fights For Apples

Governor Fights for Apples. I'm Greg Martin with today's Fruit Grower Report. Washington Governor Christine Gregoire spent last week in Mexico on a trade mission with a large contingent of ag producers from the state and one topic in particular that was brought to the front was the apple market. GREGOIRE: We spent at least an hour talking about how do we move forward and set behind us 12 years of litigation and virtually no progress and importantly, how do we put into place some sort of agreement that will allow us to beat this kind of situation off in the future. While the issue is far from being settled, Gregoire says there was some openness to the ideas. GREGOIRE: I think it was a productive meeting, I mean, obviously there's nothing settled but we do have a path forward to see if we can't find a way to put this litigation behind us without candidly resorting to the WTO process which is where it will be sitting here in the very near future. The problem has been a tariff issue on their side. GREGOIRE: What they've done is they've got up to 47% tariff on our red and golden (apples). It's not on our others. We will go from 5 million packages last year of apples to 9 million this year bit those are Galas and other varieties. They are not red and golden. Mexico has a consuming population that exceeds their own domestic production. GREGOIRE: Mexico is our biggest importer or apples. Imagine the possibilities if we could put our Red and Golden Delicious in the marketplace here as well. That's today's Fruit Grower Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.