Re: Re: overseas shipping

agreed. some encouraging news though, looks like ag related stuff is going to go back to the Dept. of Ag as opposed to homeland security. not real sure why Homeland was overseeing all the agricultural issues to begin with.....will keep an eye on things and try to update when new info is out. we are in a huge ag county so there are a lot of hearings and meetings taking place on a regular basis. some of it pertains to iris and import/export in general. will pass on any info we receive. 
Mike
----- Original Message ----- From: "Robt R Pries" <rpries@sbcglobal.net> 
To: <iris@hort.net>
Sent: Tuesday, March 04, 2008 2:35 PM
Subject: Re: [iris] Re: overseas shipping



Griff:

i have not been involved in international
interchanges for several years but i can tell you that
it is becoming more dificult and the future seems to
be headed in a direction that will be even worse.
There are hearings that come about from time to time
and I have passed along some of this information.
unfortunately there does not seem to be any great
interest unless an individual is directly involved. It
seems that unless we are vigilant we keep loosing more
and more of our rights. The recent change to the
department of homeland security has only made things
more dificult. I am guilty about not speaking out
enough at the right times but i suspect most of us are
ignorant of the details and few want to spend the time
to acquaint themselves with the issues. We get the
government we deserve. I wish there was someone who
could follow some of this and could do a better job of
alerting us at crucial moments.



--- "J. Griffin Crump" <jgcrump@cox.net> wrote:


Mike and Bob Pries  --  Thanks for your replies.
The last time I shipped
anything was 2 1/2 years ago.  As an individual,
non-commercial shipper, I
simply had to set up an appointment for the Dept of
Agriculture inspector to
visit here and inspect the materials (rhizomes) I
proposed to ship.  That
part was easy.  There was a fee of $23 to cover
administrative costs and
issue the phyto-sanitary certificate, but I was
surprised to learn that that
was for each package, no matter that they were
looked at during the same
visit.  This seems to me to be unreasonable.  While
a commercial shipper can
recover the cost by adding it to the price of the
items shipped, that
doesn't apply to the non-commercial shipper.  Still,
the fact that even some
commercial growers are being discouraged from
shipping overseas is
worrisome.  Your experience, Mike, of things getting
better last year
unfortunately wasn't shared by everyone.  It was
last year that one such
grower of my acquaintance, describing the last
attempted shipment (to
England) as a "nightmare", said that, after several
frustrated attempts to
process the paperwork, the inspector simply gave up.
 And so did the grower.
In that case, it seemed that the problem resulted
from the then-recent
reclassification of irises as perennials.

Perhaps this is something we should try to keep an
eye on to see if things
do improve this year.  Could a notice in the
Bulletin solicit growers'
experiences as a means of focusing attention and
possible action on the
problem?  Dealing with multiple bureaucracies ain't
gonna be easy.  --
Griff
----- Original Message ----- From: "sutton's iris gardens" <info@suttoniris.com> 
To: <iris@hort.net>
Sent: Tuesday, March 04, 2008 4:17 PM
Subject: [iris] Re: overseas shipping


> Hi Griff,
> We don't seem to have any problems importing, in
fact none, other than
> phyto certs.  It might be difficult for the
overseas folks to ship here
> but the acquisition on this end is easy.  Getting
iris out to other
> countries is extremely difficult, especially those
with quarantine
> requirements.  Two years ago we couldn't ship
anything to EU countries as
> they had put up an insurmountable barrier.  That
was eased last year a bit
> but required inspections of the gardens 3 times
per year by a Dept. of Ag
> official. Hopefully everybody has their head on
straight now and things
> will go smoothly both ways....
> We were told that a large part of the problem is
that iris are such a
> small crop $$wise that not many resources or
effort is focused on the
> problems.  I guess we will just have to make iris
a much bigger
> crop....:-)
> Mike Sutton
>
>


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