October 9, 2015
CapitalPress.com
7
Proposal seeks to keep ports
open during labor disputes
By DAN WHEAT
Capital Press
Dan Wheat/Capital Press
Maribel Zuniga packs Gala apples at Northern Fruit Co. in East Wenatchee, Wash., on Oct. 5, while
David Allen, quality control manager, makes a point to Scotty Lee and Gordon Zou of Kingo Fruit,
Guangzhou, China.
Chinese fruit importers
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included Duckwall Fruit and
Diamond Fruit Growers. They
were to end the week on Oct. 9
WENATCHEE, Wash. — at the The Pear Bureau in Port-
The Washington Apple Com- land and visiting downtown
mission and The Pear Bureau retail markets of Fred Meyer,
Northwest hosted a delegation Zupan’s and Whole Foods.
of Chinese fruit importers this
“We think China could be
week in an effort to boost apple the third-largest market for
and pear sales.
Washington apples in the near
The nine importers — from future,” said Todd Fryhover, the
Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou apple commission president.
and Dalian — visited orchards
Mexico, Canada and Taiwan
and apple and pear packing traditionally have been the top
facilities in Wenatchee and Ya- three markets. Washington nor-
kima, Wash., and Hood River, mally exports 30 percent of its
Ore.
apples.
“The new crop Gala com-
Red and Golden Delicious
ing in is very soft, not crunchy apples from Washington, Or-
enough. They say it’s from the egon and Idaho were allowed
KHDW \RX KDG LQ -XQH , KRSH into China in 1993. Other
quality improves to compete Washington varieties entered
with our (China’s domestic) Fuji from Hong Kong via “gray”
and Gala that starts at the end markets.
of October,” said Qian Yinjun,
Reds and Goldens were
general manager of Shanghai banned from August 2012 to
Guowang Produce Co., Shang- Oct. 31, 2014, after disease was
hai.
found in some shipments. When
Yinjun and the other eight shipments resumed, they were
importers received an industry immediately hindered by work
overview at the apple commis- slowdowns at U.S. ports.
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Full-varietal access in both
5 before watching apples being directions was announced by
packed at Northern Fruit Co. the U.S. and Chinese govern-
in East Wenatchee and visiting PHQWVRQ-DQ3DSHUZRUNWR
nearby Banning Orchards.
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They toured McDougall & -XQH'RPH[6XSHUIUHVK*URZ-
Sons Inc. and Custom Apple ers, Yakima, apparently was
Packers in Wenatchee before WKH ¿UVW 86 PDUNHWHU WR VHOO
heading to Zirkle-Rainier Fruit varieties other than Reds and
in Yakima on Tuesday. Evans Goldens into China, shipping a
Fruit Co. in Cowiche, CPC In- couple hundred 40-pound boxes
ternational Apple Co. in Tieton RI*DODLQWR*XDQJ]KRXRQ-XQH
and Legacy Fruit Packers in 20.
Wapato were on their schedule
From Aug. 17 through Sept.
in the Yakima area.
30, 155,445 boxes of Washing-
Their Hood River itinerary ton apples have been shipped to
By DAN WHEAT
Capital Press
China, according to the Wash-
ington State Tree Fruit Associ-
ation.
Shippers hope to top a 3 mil-
lion box peak to China-Hong
Kong in 2010-2011. Fryhover
and others envision 10 million
boxes — about $200 million —
in sales annually in a few years.
Desmond O’Rourke, a re-
tired Washington State Univer-
sity agricultural economist and
an apple and China expert, has
warned China can be an unreli-
able trading partner. He has said
devaluation of the Chinese yuan
by 2 percent in August is small
enough that it shouldn’t hurt ex-
ports early this season. A bigger
concern is if more devaluations
follow, he said.
Chelan Fresh Marketing,
Oneonta Starr Ranch Grow-
ers and Evans Fruit Co. have
shipped the most apples to Chi-
na.
“A lot of us have core cus-
tomers (in China) we’ve devel-
oped over years but that doesn’t
mean these guys aren’t import-
ant,” Tom Riggan, general man-
ager of Chelan Fresh, said of the
delegation.
“We always try to meet
anybody new. They could help
us reach outlying Chinese cit-
ies. There’s ton of opportunity.
There’s a lot of online direct
sales into homes,” Riggan said.
China bought 8,600 boxes
of 2015 crop Northwest pears
so far through Sept. 30, up 8.8
percent from the same period
last year despite devaluation of
the yuan, said Lynsey Kennedy,
international marketing manag-
er at The Pear Bureau.
PASCO, Wash. — A bill
setting up automatic triggers to
start the Taft-Hartley Act pro-
cess in the event of future labor
or management disruptions at
U.S. ports is being proposed by
Rep. Dan Newhouse, R-Wash.
Newhouse announced his
Ensuring Continued Opera-
tions and No Other Major Inci-
dents, Closures or Slowdowns
(ECONOMICS) Act at Easter-
day Farms in Pasco on Oct. 5.
Easterday, a family potato farm
and packing operation, is one
of thousands of farms through-
out the West that were impact-
ed by the slowdown of cargo at
29 West Coast ports from May
2014 through February 2015.
It was caused by conten-
tious contract negotiations be-
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sociation and the International
Longshore and Warehouse
Union.
Newhouse was joined for
his announcement by Wash-
ington Farm Bureau President
Mike LaPlant and Matt Harris,
assistant executive director of
the Washington State Potato
Commission.
The bill would mandate
mediation in labor disputes
and require a board of inqui-
ry be convened when certain
economic triggers are met. The
board would be required to
report to the president and the
public to recommend whether
a Taft-Hartley judicial injunc-
tion should be sought to order
an end to a dispute. The pres-
ident or state governors would
still have to seek the injunction.
The triggers are:
• When four or more ports
are involved.
• When 6,000 or more port
workers are affected.
AP Photo/Ben Margot File
Container ships wait at the dock to be unloaded at the Port of
Oakland Feb. 12 in Oakland, Calif. A months-long work slow-
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lation under consideration in Congress is aimed at preventing a
replay of the slowdown.
• When U.S. exports drop
15 percent or more in one
month or 5 percent or more in
two consecutive months.
Any single trigger could
start the process, but the bill
is still in draft stage and New-
house is seeking feedback for
improvements, he told Capital
Press. He said he hopes to in-
troduce the bill within a couple
of months.
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would be broadened through-
out U.S. labor law to include
slowdowns, lockouts or threat-
ened strikes or lockouts. A
board of inquiry could be trig-
gered for any of those.
The bill is meant to comple-
ment HR3398, the Protecting
Orderly and Responsible Tran-
sit of Shipment (PORTS) Act,
authored by Newhouse and
Rep. Dave Reichert, R-Wash.
The PORTS Act, and a com-
panion measure in the Sen-
ate, would allow governors of
seaport states and territories to
invoke the Taft-Hartley Act to
order dock workers to work.
The PORTS Act includes
slowdowns, not just strikes or
lockouts, in the Taft-Hartley
process.
“There is a lot of interest
in preventing the kind of eco-
nomic losses we experienced
this past season,” Newhouse
said. “We still haven’t regained
(the markets of) some of the
commodities that were lost so
it’s still costing producers to-
day.”
The slowdown cost up to
$2.5 billion per day and con-
tributed to an anemic 0.2 per-
cent annualized growth rate in
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introducing a bill last May that
would set up an early warning
system of abnormal port oper-
ations.
Exports and imports of
many commodities through
the West Coast were impacted
by last year’s slowdown. The
Washington apple industry lost
$100 million in sales, accord-
ing to the Northwest Horticul-
tural Council.
More California winemakers
using less water to grow grapes
By ELLEN KNICKMEYER
Associated Press
RUTHERFORD,
Calif.
(AP) — The grape vines that
grower Frank Leeds tends in
Napa Valley stand among the
unheralded heroes of Califor-
nia’s drought, producing de-
cade after decade of respected
Cabernets and other wines
without a drop of added water.
In a state where farms and
dairies take the biggest gulp
of the water supply, Leeds and
the owners of his Frog’s Leap
Winery are among a minority
— but a growing minority — of
California growers and wine-
makers who believe that when
it comes to wine grapes, the less
irrigation, the better.
“This is not struggling,
skinny, tiny grapevines, right?”
Leeds asked proudly earlier this
growing season while leading a
tour through the dry-farmed
rows of wine grapes.
Frog’s Leap’s vines stood
several feet apart from each
other, giving the roots plenty of
room to plunge into the soil and
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row country road, black tubing
of drip irrigation laced through
another vineyard’s grape vines,
more crowded but looking no
less bountiful than their un-wa-
tered neighbors at Frog’s Leap.
Wine grapes, California’s
No. 3 cash crop, in general are
far less thirsty than the state’s
No. 2 cash crop, almonds. But
with 615,000 acres of wine
grapes in production in Califor-
nia, wine industry trends in wa-
ter use clearly have an impact
on the overall water supply.
As wine growers close out
harvest this month, California
is ending a fourth year of se-
vere drought, with mandatory
cutbacks in water for cities and
towns statewide, and for many
farms.
Overwhelmingly, the debate
in California’s wine industry
over water use is driven by
what’s best for the quantity and
quality of the grape crop, more
so than conservation.
All sides — the irrigated,
the unirrigated, and the in-be-
tween — feel strongly that their
way is the right way.
For Marc Mondavi, a
third-generation producer in
one of California’s most in-
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makes sense that grapes thrive
best with an occasional sip of
running water.
“I always tell people, I give
them a little scenario: They put
you and I in the middle of the
Mojave Desert,” in a foot race,
Mondavi said. “Who’s gonna
run the distance? More than
likely the person who’s had
some water” to drink along the
way.
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