Quarantine for grapevine moth ends in four counties

After two years, the invasive European grapevine moth has been eradicated in four counties—Fresno, Mendocino, Merced and San Joaquin. The announcement last week from the U.S. Department of Agriculture Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service clears the way for smoother, less costly exports of California grapes and stone fruit to domestic and international markets.

APHIS and the California Department of Food and Agriculture said they have cut the overall regulated area surrounding EGVM infestation sites from a radius of 5 miles to 3 miles. As a result, the regulated quarantine area for the pest has been reduced by about 50 percent, allowing for unrestricted movement of grapes and other host commodities from the areas.

The partial removal of the pest quarantine means Mexico will now accept table grapes and tree fruit grown in those four California counties without requiring additional treatments.

Mexico is an important market for California tree fruit, said Barry Bedwell, president of the California Grape and Tree Fruit League. But he noted the Mexican government will continue to maintain very tight oversight of all fresh produce imports.

"That will not change with the lifting of the quarantine in the four counties," Bedwell said.

Mexico is one of the top five export markets for American table grapes and the third-largest importer of American fresh stone fruit. In 2011, California exported 3.4 million cartons of fresh stone fruit to Mexico, valued at $45 million, and 5.7 million boxes of fresh table grapes, valued at more than $102 million.

The biggest benefit from lifting the quarantine is improved ability for growers to ship fruit faster and at lower cost, Bedwell said.

"The reality is that when the quarantine was put in place two years ago, the biggest impact was on the early-season stone fruit growers," he said. "Unfortunately, they felt the brunt of the reaction to finding an invasive species in their growing area, because they couldn't ship at the time and lost their market."

Once the quarantine rules were put in place, Bedwell said growers learned to live with the rules and resumed shipments.

"But now that the pest has been eradicated from the four counties, growers, particularly those in Fresno County, can look forward to a season where they don't need to worry about proper identification on packaging, setting up appointments for inspections or making sure all the pest trapping protocols follow regulations," he said, calling those requirements "lots of hoops that have now been removed."

That doesn't mean markets will necessarily expand, he said, but the cost savings and greater efficiency in shipping should help farmers.

Officials estimated growers in the four counties newly released from the EGVM quarantine will save an estimated $10 million a year in compliance and inspection costs. Quarantines for the pest remain in effect in Napa, Nevada, Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, Solano and Sonoma counties.

"The best news in all of this is that we were able to eradicate the pest in our county," said Bruce Blodgett, San Joaquin Farm Bureau Federation executive director. "And it looks like we're moving down the same path to eradication with Oriental fruit fly."

He said that will further open markets and lead to fewer restrictions for San Joaquin County farmers—everything from production practices to marketing their commodities.

"Our only concern is a lack of funding at both the state and federal levels to give us tools to first prevent these pests from entering our region or our state and, second, give us the tools should a pest be detected so we can address the problem," Blodgett said.

(Kate Campbell is an assistant editor of Ag Alert. She may be contacted at kcampbell@cfbf.com.)