EEUU: Progress reported toward restoring Idaho chipping potato access to Japan

Leaders with USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service and Japan’s Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries met in Idaho Falls June 1-2 for their annual bilateral plant health negotiations.

In conjunction with the meeting, leaders from both countries also visited an Eastern Idaho seed potato farm, a local packing shed and USDA’s pale cyst nematode program facility in Idaho Falls. Japan imports no fresh U.S. table potatoes and has restricted access to Idaho chipping potatoes due to the 2006 discovery of pale cyst nematode in Eastern Idaho.

PCN is known to exist in the U.S. only within a 7.5-mile radius of Idaho’s Bonneville and Bingham counties. USDA is treating 2,897 infested acres and has placed special sanitation requirements on another 7,032 acres with known associations with infested fields, with the goal of eradicating the pest.

Pat Kole, IPC’s vice president of legal and governmental affairs, said Japanese officials visited the PCN program during November 2015, and during the recent meeting they “discussed a path forward to permit chipping potatoes from approved Idaho counties.”

The sides also discussed a U.S. proposal to expand the current shipping window for U.S. chipping potatoes from February through July to year-round, as well as the process of seeking approval for additional inland facilities in Japan to receive U.S. chipping spuds.

“Official communication between both sides in the coming weeks is expected to further advance the progress made during the bilateral,” Kole said.

The most current trade numbers, supplied by Potatoes USA from Global Trade Atlas, show Japan increased its fresh U.S. chipping potato shipments by 75.59 percent from July 2015 through January 2016, importing nearly 7,000 metric tons.

Japan also increased U.S. dehydrated imports by 59 percent during the first half of the marketing year to nearly 20,000 metric tons, and its frozen U.S. potato imports increased by 4.5 percent to about 133,000 metric tons.

Potatoes USA Chief Marketing Officer John Toaspern said his organization offers Japan “a full marketing program for food service and ingredients for frozen and dehydrated products.”