September 2011 NHC NEWS A Monthly Bulletin of the Northwest Horticultural Council CPC The Crop Protection Coalition is in the midst of change.  New leaders have emerged and its policy aims have been recalibrated. Jim Cranney of the California Citrus Quality Council is the coalition’s new chairman, replacing Reggie Brown of the Florida Tomato Exchange.  Its treasurer is now Rick Tomlinson of the California Strawberry Commission.  The Northwest Horticultural Council, a founding member of this national coalition, remains actively represented on the CPC’s board of directors. In terms of policy, the CPC has since its inception concentrated on national and international regulatory issues of importance to the continued agricultural and trade uses of methyl bromide, a commercially important fumigant. This general focus continues unabated; however there is now increased attention to QPS uses, or those involving quarantine and preshipment uses of methyl bromide. Prior to this year, international attempts to ban or severely reduce pre-plant soil fumigation uses of methyl bromide dominated the work of the CPC.  Here, growers of tomatoes, strawberries and other field crops in Florida and California have had special concerns given the lack of viable alternatives to its use.  The battle here was for critical use exemptions (CUEs) from the proper authorities. Why is methyl bromide usage under threat?   Because it has been clearly identified as a bad actor by the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer, an environmental treaty administered by the United Nations’ Environment Programme. With most ozone depleting substances being now banned or severely restricted, attention of international environmental officials is drifting to very specialized and limited uses of these chemicals, such as for agricultural quarantines.  These uses include, for example, the controlled employment of methyl bromide— to prevent the introduction of unwanted pests—on most fresh cherry exported from the United States to Japan. ¨ MARKETS An important political and economic advisor to the last two czars of Russia has had his career detailed in a recently published book entitled Tales of Imperial Russia: The Life and Times of Sergei Witte, 1849-1915.  While he could not make the leap from his belief in anything other than dynastic, autocratic leadership for Russia, Count Witte was an economic modernizer who believed in capital markets and trade for the empire he served. “'To impart the proper economic growth to our fatherland’, [Witte] continued, required what in effect was an imperial economic zone ‘throughout the broad expanse of our Empire.’  Local goods and regional markets need to be superseded by spaces in which ‘every producer has the broadest possible market for his products, because the interests of consumers are advanced considerably through such an expression of supply.’” It is interesting to read of debates over “buy local” extending back into the days of Czars Alexander III and Nicholas II. ¨ VISIT This year’s “FAS Foreign Agricultural Attaché Tour” will be a September visit to the Pacific Northwest.  This one-week educational tour for about 25 diplomatic officials stationed at various embassies in Washington, D.C. is sponsored by USDA’s Foreign Agricultural Service and coordinated by the Oregon Department of Agriculture and the Washington State Department of Agriculture. The Northwest Horticultural Council will host a dinner on September 13 for these visiting attachés as their tour’s itinerary winds its way to Yakima from Seattle.  The next day, led by FAS officer Bonnie Borris, the tour group will see more of the Yakima Valley, and then go south to the Columbia Gorge, and finally west across Oregon’s agricultural fields before returning to our nation’s capital. ¨ September 29 – NHC Foreign Trade Committee meeting, Yakima, Washington. Travel Christian Schlect September 15 – Continuing Legal Education Seminar: Federal Administrative Law, Seattle, Washington Mike Willett September 22 – Pear Bureau Northwest Board of Directors’ meeting, Portland, Oregon. Pears we have had plenty and good.  You feel as if you had done something when you offer anybody fruit from a tree you planted twenty years ago. September 25, 1866  Letters of James Russell Lowell Northwest Horticultural Council 105 South 18th Street, Suite 105 Yakima, Washington 98901, USA Voice: (509) 453-3193, Fax: (509) 457-7615 E-mail general@nwhort.org