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News
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Oregon Christmas trees begin their annual export journey
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11/10/2010
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Article Content Suggested lead
It's another busy time of the year for growers and shippers in Oregon, the nation's leading producer of Christmas trees:
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Audio 01
It's a sure sign that the holiday season is fast approaching. Oregon's $110 million dollar Christmas tree industry is abuzz with activity:
MC ANINCH: "Shippers are cutting trees right now. They are processing those trees, they are loading trucks and sending them out of state to other states or to foreign countries. Over 80 percent of the trees that we harvest in Oregon go out of state." :11
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Audio 02
Gary McAninch (MACK-an-inch) of the Oregon Department of Agriculture supervises the inspectors who check the trees and write the certificates that allow those trees to be exported:
MC ANINCH: "We look primarily for pests and diseases. Usually a country will tell us what pests or diseases they are wanting to keep out, wanting to keep us from sending them. We do the inspections for them, write a certificate stating that we've looked at these trees and we don't think they contain the pests or diseases you are concerned about." :17
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From now until the middle of December, ODA inspectors will be extremely busy. Once again, Mexico is the number one export market for Oregon Christmas trees. Closer to home, California is the big buyer, responsible for nearly half of all trees cut and sold- about six times as many trees than are sold to Oregonians themselves. In Salem, I'm Bruce Pokarney.
Additional audio: Audio 03
MC ANINCH says the job of ODA inspectors and the growers and shippers of Oregon Christmas trees has started to get very hectic and will remain that way until the middle of December:
"The reason it gets so busy is that the Christmas tree shipping season is very narrow because of the nature of the holiday. So they all pretty much ship in five or six weeks." :09
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Additional audio: Audio 04
MC ANINCH says even though Oregon Christmas trees end up in a large number of countries around the world, Mexico remains the top export customer:
"We expect that we will ship about the same amount we did last year- about 2,100 truck loads. That's 6-7-800, 000 trees, quite a few trees to Mexico." :11
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Full story
http://oregon.gov/ODA/news/101110christmas_trees.shtml |
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