State’s Fruit Growers Keep a Wary Eye on Early-Arriving Imports From Chile

The cargo ship Reefer Dragon unloaded the season’s first fresh fruit from Chile in the Port of Los Angeles over the holidays.

Until this year, the start of the shipments was greeted with equanimity by California growers, since the inverted seasons in the two hemispheres--it’s “June in January” in Santiago--made the two crops complementary rather than competitive.

But last September, a delegation of California table grape growers visited Chile for what California Farmer magazine called “a showdown” on that country’s “infringements” on their U.S. markets.

Chilean grapes that arrive before mid-January compete with the last of the California crop, according to Bruce J. Obbink, president of the California Table Grape Commission.

While the first shipment to Los Angeles came Dec. 26, the first refrigerated load landed on a U.S. dock around Thanksgiving Day in Philadelphia, he said.

The Chilean Winter Fruit Assn. claims that Chile now commands 27.5% of the U.S. market for table grapes, compared to California’s 68% share. (Mexico and Arizona account for the rest.)

According to the association, California’s season runs from May to December and Chile’s from January through April.

But the situation is not that neat, California growers say, and earlier arrival of Chilean fruit “moves a cooperative venture into a competitive venture, which requires new rules,” Obbink told California Farmer.

The magazine included a denial of the season-infringement charge by Phillip Smith, Los Angeles-based executive coordinator of the Chilean Importers Assn., although he conceded that “a large quantity of California grapes carried into the Chilean season from January to April.”

An estimated 500 million pounds of nectarines, peaches, plums and grapes are expected to enter this country from Chile this winter--60% of it moving through Philadelphia, 25% through Los Angeles and the rest through Florida ports (10%), Seattle and Galveston, Tex. (5%).

The Chilean Winter Fruit Assn. estimated the retail value of the shipments at between $600 million and $750 million.

The quantities brought in have skyrocketed in the 1980s, and the importation of grapes--by far the volume leader among fruits--clearly shows the trend: From 77.1 million pounds in 1980, imports peaked at 396 million pounds in 1985 and have remained essentially flat since, with 383.4 million pounds last year and 387 million pounds expected to enter the country this year.

The Chilean Winter Fruit Assn. attributes the growth to the modern refrigerated ships, such as the ultramodern Dragon, which can bring the fragile fruit to U.S. ports in 10 days.

For now, apparently, the Californians are carefully monitoring the arrival of the Chilean fruit at supermarkets, many of which were still featuring California-grown grapes during the holidays.