China's apple industry a growing challenge

The Seattle Times Company ^ | December 19, 2004 | Craig Troianello

[hedgetrimmer]

Guojian Liang is both friend and competitor to Central Washington.

For four years, he's been buying apples from Wenatchee and selling them across China. During a one-month span in September 2003, his company imported 10,029 boxes, a feat that garnered an award from Gov. Gary Locke during a visit last year.

His company, Shunfeng Trading, also exports Chinese apples to Singapore, Malaysia and other countries.

"The Chinese Fuji can dominate in those countries," he says. "The cost is less and the quality is good."

In fact, the Chinese Fuji already dominates in Singapore and Malaysia, as well as in Thailand and the Philippines — all markets where Washington's growers have lost market share in the past decade.

Across the Pacific, growers have watched as globalization raced ahead along with China's growing economic prowess.

Prosser farmer Larry Olsen recalls first reading in the early 1990s about China's emerging apple industry.

"The tone of the report was almost condescending," he remembers.

Those days are gone.

China overtook the United States as the world's largest apple producer by the early 1990s. Since then, production has quadrupled and exports have skyrocketed by more than 1,700 percent.

"Anyone who underestimates the Chinese is a fool," says Olsen. "The level of awareness is growing; we've passed the point of denial," says Jim McFerson of the Washington Tree Fruit Research Commission, which is leading a broad-based effort to improve technology to make American apples more competitive.

Meanwhile, China is moving ahead. In upcoming trade talks, the Chinese are expected to press the United States to open its markets to their apples.

This country has long banned Chinese apples on grounds they can carry pests that endanger American crops. In contrast, U.S. apple exports to China and Hong Kong measure nearly 2 million boxes annually.

"Their economic strength has increased and they are doing a full-court press to get access where they don't have access," said Desmond O'Rourke, a researcher and consultant who has long followed China's apple development.

But despite the staggering growth of its apple industry, China still faces challenges.

"I think we can compete, but we need to make comparable investments in the way we do things," Olsen says. "We have to figure out a way to make ourselves better producers."

[hedgetrimmer]

"Anyone who underestimates the Chinese is a fool," says Olsen.

Do the people who are penning all the "free trade" deals underestimate China, or do they know the threat and do it anyway?

[hedgetrimmer]

PING

[farmfriend]

I've heard that the chinese apple industry harms out grape industry because the apple juice can be used as a sweetener instead of the white grape juice..

Rights, farms, environment ping.
Let me know if you wish to be added or removed from this list.
I don't get offended if you want to be removed.

[hedgetrimmer]

Global apple juice production in 2003/04 reflects a projected record production in China, the worlds top producer. Small production increases in Argentina, Chile, Italy, Poland, and Spain are helping to bolster the world trend by offsetting declines in Germany, Hungary, New Zealand, South Africa, and the United States. The United States is expected to have another year of declining apple juice production, down 6 percent from 2002/2003.

http://www.fas.usda.gov/htp/horticulture/Apple%20Juice/Apple%20Juice%20Feature%20May%202004.pdf#search='apple%20juice%20concentrate%20production'

[radicalamericannationalist]

Being a net importer of food worked wonders for British prospects for success in WWI. Sarcasm off.

[hedgetrimmer]

Farmers struggling to recover from glut of apple-juice concentrate

Tuesday, December 5, 2000

By LINDA ASHTON
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS


WENATCHEE -- A flood of below-cost Chinese apple juice concentrate subsided with the imposition of a U.S. tariff on imports, but apple growers still struggle to recover from prices that plunged dramatically two years ago.

There is a glut of apple-juice concentrate on the global market, said Kraig Naasz, director of the U.S. Apple Association, an industry trade group in McLean, Va.

"While we have succeeded in preventing the Chinese from exporting unfairly priced concentrate to our market, it's still being sold somewhere in the world, displacing sales wherever that's occurring," he said.

The International Trade Commission would eventually rule that the cheap concentrate had economically damaged U.S. producers and, in May, the U.S. Department of Commerce imposed a 52 percent duty on most of the Chinese concentrate imports to even competition.



In Wenatchee, a 55-year-old tree-fruit lending cooperative has stopped making loans and will shut down next year because apple farmers aren't making enough money to cover the cost of production.

When prices are "way below -- I mean way below -- the cost of production, then you know you've got problems."

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/juic05.shtml

[farmfriend]

2003/04 reflects a projected record production in China

And they dump a lot of it on our markets as sweetener. It really hurts our grape industry.

Raisin Industry Relief

Three years ago several factors converged simultaneously on the California raisin market.

1. Apple juice from China and Argentina were dumped on the domestic market displacing grape juice as a commercial sweetener. Production from 20,000 California raisin grape acres became surplus.
2. Recent plantings in Turkey matured and provided lower cost competition in the European market. Production from 15,000 California raisin grape acres became surplus.
3. Major wineries overestimated the rate of growth in the market, offering rural land owners attractive contracts to plant wine grape varietals. Over planting of wine grape varietals along the California Coast and in Oregon brought an oversupply of more than 25,000 acres to the domestic market displacing the Thompson Raisin variety.
4. The total surplus from these three issues equal 60,000 acres (150,000 tons) and is the basis for the problems.
5. The oversight organizations for the raisin industry were slow to react to these severe threats after a long string of years in which supply and demand were in balance. A full growing season and one half of another passed before raisin growers took action to reinvigorate these organizations and develop a program to bring a balance to supply and demand.

[ProudVet77]

We are also screwing ourselves. I live in a part of MA that is apple country, and in talking to an apple farmer he was complaining that while he can't use Alar which reduces his yield, he has to compete with overseas apple producers that can use Alar. Even though it has since that the Alar scare was just BS. And where did we see BS first. Yup 60 Minutes. But the laws against it's usage are still on the books.

[hedgetrimmer]

Good info. Thanks.

[E.G.C.]

BTT!!!!!!

[ken21]

anyone who underestimates china's move to be a hegemon, their term, doesn't understand the chinese.

they're contracting for oil and minerals in the southern western hemisphere and providing money for infrastructure development in these countries. besides the obvious need for oil and minerals, the stategy is to undermine the united states within our own hemisphere.

the united states has fought to a stalemate or lost 2 wars on the asian continent, the continent that china claims to be hegemon.

the new left of the 1970s undermined the american war in vietnam. today they're the leaders in the american media, and they're doing the same thing: ted kennedy criticized the iraq war and the day after al jazzera broadcast al sadr's repetition of kennedy's remarks. the left will someday get what they worked for--a weakened america confronted by china and islam.

in its rise to a world economic power china will increasingly move 3rd world countries against the united states. by trading and aiding south and central american countries, china can indirectly control america's food supply. our food supply is increasingly becoming international.

meanwhile, china will protect persian and arab countries in their jihad against the united states, and in some cases, giving them military and technical assistance.

[Carry_Okie]

in its rise to a world economic power china will increasingly move 3rd world countries against the united states. by trading and aiding south and central american countries, china can indirectly control america's food supply. our food supply is increasingly becoming international.

meanwhile, china will protect persian and arab countries in their jihad against the united states, and in some cases, giving them military and technical assistance.

You are one of the few on this site who understands this. Toss in the way environmentalism is setting up the US for total resource dependency and you've got the whole picture. The Agenda21 represents the military strategy of global communo/fascism directed at American freedom.

[hedgetrimmer]

Thanks for your thoughtful responses.

[ken21]

thanks.

[ken21]

you are welcome.

[Fishing-guy]

It has always been interesting to me to watch my state politics. On one side, you have politicians and businessmen who fall over each other to do business with the Chinese and other countries. On the other side, we have people who are trying all sorts of tactics to keep imports out.

Personally, we should ask for FAIR and free trade.