05/16/06 Pulse industry gets good news

Farm and Ranch May 16, 2006 Recent U.S. House and Senate agreement on a tax reconciliation bill was good news for northwest pulse industry. The measure includes a USA Dry Pea and Lentil Council supported amendment that repeals tax breaks for U.S. companies that are incompatible with WTO rules. Without that repeal, the European Union was prepared this week to slap 14 percent tariffs on various U.S. goods including pulses. Tim McGreevy of the USA Dry Pea and Lentil Council says that would have cost the industry millions of dollars. McGreevy: "Obviously a 14% tariff would have completely taken us out of the market. The Canadians would have captured basically a 80-100-thousand metric ton dry pea market that is headed into Europe at the present time, and about a ten-thousand metric ton chickpea market. So, to the industry it's worth about 25-million dollars and we were very pleased to see this issue resolved." McGreevy says earlier this year, just the prospect of those tariffs actually had an impact. McGreevy: "And it actually had an impact on grower price even though the tariff had not gone into effect. So, at this point anyway, we are confident that this is not going to be a barrier we'll have to suffer and our prices should reflect that. The President is expected to sign that tax bill. I'm Bob Hoff and that's the Northwest Farm and Ranch Report on the Northwest Ag Information Network.