April, 1999
The future of a national marketing program for apples will have to take one of two paths.
Commodities can put together either a marketing order or a research and promotion program under U.S. law, according to Joe Nicholson, who is chairman of the U.S. Apple Association’s task force on the issue. The group met for the first time February 25.
"What we are doing first is to understand all the options and then run it by the people in our areas to start a dialogue and see what surfaces," he said. "But we must understand what we are talking about so the discussion can be intelligently pursued."
Marketing order
There are currently 37 marketing orders. A few include tart cherries in Michigan New York, Pennsylvania, Oregon, Utah, Washington and Wisconsin; Washington sweet cherries; and Vidalia onions.
Under a federal marketing order, a commodity could control supply, establish research programs for marketing and production practices, and establish quality requirements.
Only domestic production can be covered by the order, while imports cannot. A program can be put in on a regional basis like the Georgia peach program.
The states currently approved for a marketing order on fresh apples are Washington, Oregon, Idaho, New York, Michigan, Maryland, New Jersey, Indiana, California, Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, Illinois and Ohio.
A marketing order for canned and frozen apple products could be put in place for all of the above listed states except Washington, Oregon and Idaho.
Pennsylvanian, Virginia and the Carolinas could not be included at this time for any marketing program. Any changes in a marketing order, including changing the states that it could be implemented in, would have to be made through legislation.
For a marketing order to be implemented, it must be approved by 2/3 of the producers voting in the referendum.
The supply and quality regulations are applied at the handler level. Handlers also finance the program. Supply control can be done through producer allotments, reserve pool and flow-to-market features.
Paid advertising for generic promotion of the commodity can be a part of the order.
Research and promotion program
Research and promotion programs differ from marketing orders in that they can be national in scope and can include imports.
There are currently five commodities, which have voted in research and promotion programs. They include honey, mushroom, popcorn, potatoes and watermelon.
A research and promotion program is designed to develop, finance and carry out commodity-specific programs such as consumer information, industry information, advertising, promotion, research and development to improve a commodity’s competitive position in the marketplace, and expand domestic and foreign markets.
These programs must be national in scope and cover all domestic production. It can include fresh and processed imports of the commodity.
It can provide exemptions for small levels of production and imports; credit towards national assessments for assessments to state programs; and credit towards national assessments for branded advertising by cooperatives.
The industry has three choices in voting requirements including:
Assessments to fund the program may be put on producers, handlers, processors, importers and/or others in the marketing chain.
Initiation
A proposal to create either of the programs must be initiated by industry members, and be presented to the U.S. Department of Agriculture for evaluation. There would then be public hearings and then a vote.
The task force will develop a recommendation for consideration by USApple’s board of trustees at the group’s fall meeting, to be held August 21 in Chicago. USApple’s consideration of a national marketing program was initiated in response to a request late last year from the Washington Growers Clearing House Association, Wenatchee, Wash., which represents 2,700 growers in Washington state.
USApple estimates that a 15-cent-per-bushel assessment on domestic and imported fresh apples, for example, would generate approximately $30 million for national consumer promotion annually. A 25-cent-per-bushel assessment would generate about $50 million.
The Fruit Growers News