NEW HOPE FOR ASPARAGUS GROWERS

Washington asparagus growers might get a break in the new
Democrat-controlled Congress.

They sure need it.

The industry has been decimated by a U.S. drug policy designed to
encourage Peruvian coca-leaf growers to switch to asparagus. Passed in
1990 and since renewed, the Andean Trade Preferences and Drugs
Eradication Act permits certain products from Peru and Colombia,
including asparagus, to be imported to the United States
tariff-free.

The act was set to expire Dec. 31, but Congress approved a six-month
extension to make time to negotiate a proposed free-trade agreement.

We believe world markets should be more open and barriers to trade
should be lowered. But this trade preferences act, when it comes to
asparagus, is a one-sided deal that does only harm to the U.S.
industry while failing miserably at its stated intent of reducing drug
production.

The White House Office of National Drug Control Policy Web site
currently notes that the Peruvian coca acreage, mostly in the
highlands, is the highest it has been in eight years.

Meanwhile, the small country has become a powerhouse in asparagus
production along its Pacific Coast lowlands. Peruvian asparagus
production has multiplied 18-fold. The industry has developed a
vigorous market and attracted sizable capital investment.

Meanwhile, the Washington industry is a shadow of its former self.
Acreage has been cut by 71 percent to just 9,000 acres. In 2005,
Seneca closed the world's largest cannery in Dayton, Columbia County,
and shipped its state-of-the-art equipment to -- no surprise =97 Peru. So
did Del Monte, when it closed its Toppenish plant.

Is it any wonder the U.S. asparagus industry hopes the preferences act
will be allowed to lapse in June?

That's not to say the Washington Asparagus Commission has its head in
the sand over the global economy. In particular, the commission is
willing to support a proposed free-trade agreement with provisions
common to other free-trade agreements.

The industry wants the tariff re-imposed on Peruvian asparagus but
only during the U.S. growing season -- roughly April through June in
Washington -- and then phased out over a period of years. The tariff on
U.S. production would diminish also.

That would be a long, overdue solution for an industry decimated by a
drug-reduction policy that failed miserably.