Exports to Japan in Jeopardy, Say State’s Farmers : Trade: Some leaders fear Medfly infestation will tip Japanese toward boycott.
With trade tensions intensifying between the United States and Japan, farmers in California--growers of the produce favored by the dreaded Mediterranean fruit fly--are afraid of becoming an easy target in what may become a bruising struggle.
And a new University of California study says if Japan follows through on a threat to boycott California produce, it would cost the state’s export-dependent farm economy dearly.
Even before the recent collapse of trade talks between the two countries, Japan was threatening a boycott of the state’s produce because of the return of the Medfly to parts of California. Just last month, the American Embassy in Tokyo was warning Washington of “a very critical situation.”
Since then, aerial spraying has finally begun in Riverside County to kill the Medfly, a step Japan had urged. But the general trade climate has worsened dramatically, and the state’s farm lobby fears a boycott would be seen by the Japanese as an effective way to respond to President Clinton’s recent trade complaint over Japan’s treatment of U.S. cellular-phone makers.
Agriculture trade officials in Washington say they consider retaliation unlikely, but California farm leaders--having just won a hard-fought battle to ship the state’s rice to Japan--are deeply concerned.
“The threat is very real,” says Bob Vice, president of the California Farm Bureau. “Frankly, we’ve always known that’s the way the Japanese would retaliate: in agriculture.”
Such a boycott would quickly spread to other Far East nations and trim overall farm revenues by $564 million while cutting deeply into the plum and citrus business, slashing revenues for Valencia oranges alone by 55%, the UC Berkeley study says.
The short-term result would be sharply lower profits or operating losses for growers, shippers and packers, while an embargo of more than two years would cause “a significant loss in acres, jobs and assets” for about 20 crops, said the report by economist Jerome B. Siebert at UC Berkeley.
If the Medfly became established in the state, the total losses could reach some $1.4 billion a year because of the Far East boycott and other continuing costs of fighting the infestation, the study said. California farmers take in about $18 billion a year.
Siebert said a boycott by Japan is especially worrisome because Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong normally follow Japan’s lead in these matters. That could spread alarm to other regions and to other parts of the United States, he said.
The Pacific Rim has swollen in importance to California agriculture, especially citrus. Fully 60% of the products sold by Sunkist, the state’s giant citrus cooperative, are exported to Asia. Japan is Sunkist’s biggest single export market, a spokesman said.
After repeated efforts to block the aerial spraying of the insecticide malathion, the spraying began Tuesday over an 18-square-mile area of Corona and Norco in Riverside County. American Embassy officials in Japan had been urging such action.
A top official in the U.S. Department of Agriculture on Friday downplayed the likelihood of retaliation as a motive for a Japanese boycott, and said he expects no action unless the Medfly spreads.
“As long as the trappings (of the pest) are confined to that region, our concerns are lessened,” said Richard Schroeter, acting administrator of the USDA’s Foreign Agricultural Service. “The action taken by the state of California, the aerial spraying, give us optimism here.”
The specific products that would be affected by an embargo are fresh apples, apricots, avocados, bell peppers, sweet cherries, dates, figs, table grapes, grapefruit, kiwis, lemons, limes, tangerines, oranges, nectarines, peaches, pears, persimmons, plums and tomatoes.
Nearly a third of those California crops were exported in 1992, bringing in $605 million, the UC Berkeley study said. More than half that total came from Japan, Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong.
Impact on California
Should Japan and other East Asian nations boycott California produce, the impact would be devasting for certain crops. Total revenue and expected losses, in millions of dollars:
Valencia oranges: Lost revenue under boycott: $166.2 Total revenue: 299.8
Lemons: Lost revenue under boycott: 128.6 Total revenue: 334.4
Grapefruit: Lost revenue under boycott: 82.5 Total revenue: 160.2
Naval oranges: Lost revenue under boycott: 73.5 Total revenue: 482.5
Plums and prunes: Lost revenue under boycott: 43.6 Total revenue: 118.4
Table Grapes: Lost revenue under boycott: 39.3 Total revenue: 578.5
Kiwi: Lost revenue under boycott: 6.4 Total revenue: 45.0
Avocados: Lost revenue under boycott: 5.2 Total revenue: 177.1
Source: UC Berkeley
