of the export of Colombian Hass avocados and physalis to the United States have been on-going for the past four years, but a resolution now seems to be closer than ever. The Colombian Agricultural Institute (ICA) presented a plan for the export of these fruits to U.S. authorities, after a series of analyses to fight the pests affecting them.
Carlos Alberto Soto, assistant plant protection manager of ICA says that the agreement will be signed in the coming months. "The United States will conduct an internal consultation and Colombia will then review the conditions," he said.
This plan truly started moving forward in 2012, when the FTA with the United States came into force. For now, the focus is on avocado and physalis, but there are another sixteen agricultural products awaiting a work plan, including watermelon, melon, mango, cucumber and tomato.
According to Soto, at the time when plans to accept these two fruits started, the U.S. required them to control or eliminate three avocado pests, as well as the fly affecting physalis plants, as neither of these is present in North America.
"The U.S. needs to know Colombia's sanitary status and assess the risks involved in conducting business with its producers; that is why eligibility protocols are not a task for a matter of months, but years," says Soto. Initially, a pilot physalis shipment was already made, which was quarantined with cold treatment to find out how the fruit responded. Furthermore, a board of physalis producers and exporters is already arranging its first shipments to North America.
As for Hass avocados, there is a total of 9,500 hectares spread over several of the country's departments in charge of small, medium and large growers. Some of them started planting the fruit to replace illicit crops.
Sanitary authorities will meet to discuss the progress made in the work plan on the 7th of May.
