chong

Jack,
I sent the payment a month ago, but I've had email problems and so, Dr. Parmar's emails were not coming through, so I did not know that he was having problems with the Phyto-Certificate. It was only this last week that he decided to send the emails and listed Harvey on the cc block. Harvey has been forwarding Dr. Parmar's e-mails to me. So, it is only now I found out that Dr. Parmar cannot obtain a Phyto-Certificate, and therefore, our process is stalled. I have to convince the USDA of some alternate certification process if they will even listen.

I notice that your bananas arrived, finally. My, it has traveled over a month to get to you, it seems. But congratulations to you!

asacomm

Hi Chong,
You wrote us an unwelcome info that Dr. Parmer cannot obtain a Phyto-
Certificate from the Government and thus your process shall be stalled.

Our Government of Japan strictly prohibits importations of banana pups
without the phyto-certificate from the government of its exportation.
So I am only at a loss what I could do to obtain these bananas.

chong

Hello Asacomm,
Unfortunately, that may be true here also. I'm just making a last ditch effort to persuade the authorities here to accept alternate inspection from a foreign expert in the locality of the exporter, then have more rigorous inspection here, with the understanding that cost of any required treatment of the material, as necessary, will be compensated to them. If this fails, I will just have to ask Dr. Parmar to return my check, and try again under favorable conditions. I definitely will not by-pass the inspection process, at the risk of losing my permit. I already had a large shipment of seeds from Thailand confiscated and destroyed because one of the seed variety was banned from entry in the US. I was lucky that they did not cancel my permit.

Sorry to be the bearer of sad tidings. I am just as disappointed as you are.

asacomm

Hello Chong again,

You are absolutely right in what you are thinking and doing, and I also have
no intention to do any tricky procesures regarding the import restrictions of
banana pups.

So in case you find regal effective procesures or something else, please do
tell me for my restart of this issue.

Jack Daw

Chong, it's no problem, if Dr. Parmar has some troubles. If you don't manage to get the plants from India and if and when my plants catch and grow well, I might be able to send you some pups to USA during the next spring (if I hav some by then), 'cause I promised some already. If I understand it well, the phytocertiphicates can be obtained from our national agricultural association for a reasonable amount of money, depending on the number of plants being certiphicated, no matter the type.
I will also do some hardiness experiment (frost is no problem in my region in winter, lots of it whenever I want ) to determine how long the plants may or may not survive and also maybe conduct some outside overwintering method os P-stem for zones 7b/8a this or the next year.

One of the plants I got is showing something that might be considered as growing, so we will see, it's only their 2nd day in the soil.

The plants wouldn't come through our customs as well, but the people there forgot to let me know and because they didnt want me to file official note in their records, they inspected the plants quickly and made basic bacterial decontamination. Lucky me...

What is this permit of yours and how does it work in the USA with all these phytocertiphicates?

__________________
Thnx to Marcel, Ante, Dr. Chiranjit Parmar and Francesco for the plants I've received.



Zeitgeist - Corporatocracy 101 (~2hrs)

Zeitgeist - Moving Forward (~2.5hrs)

chong

Thank you very much, Jack! Best of Luck to you with your banana plants!

Chong

chong

I will keep you posted. For the moment, though, I would have to hold off the importation of the plants. I just came back from the USDA office here, and spoke to three officers. They all told me that ONLY a government certificate is acceptable. However, they told me to contact the USDA office in Washington, DC, and request more information in regards to any alternate proposals. This would prolong the procedures, and possibly take months, if no years, to sort out.

I could potentially arrange to have them shipped to another intermediate country, then get it inspected there and obtain a phytosanitary certificate, and have them re-packaged and re-shipped here. But, realistically, even this will take months to achieve.

Many of the other scenarios that the senior officer discussed with require enormous amount of time and money to accomplish. With just the money involved, we could get 4 or 5 times the number of CA Gold or CA Hardy, for every Pahari Kela.

chong

It is permit that is required by the USDA in order to import plants from other countries on a regular basis. A phytosanitary certificate is mandatory, whether you have a permit or not. The difference is that if you have a permit, you can order as many plants as you want at any one time. While without a permit, depending on your mode of transportation, you are limited to a maximum of twelve plants each time.

asacomm

I think Jack Daw was quite lucky in any case as he actually received the pups
from India.

Quite similar to the USA, Japan is considered to be one of the most strict
countries as to the importation of plants, especially musa pups.
It is mandantory to furnish the Customs the phtosanitary certificate and
the nematode-fee certificate both authorized by the government of the
export countries. Without these certificates, there is no room to negotiate
import of the musas. No other way is possible.

harveyc

I don't think Jack was particularly "lucky" as there are many countries which don't have strict importation laws, especially if they don't have major agricultural industries. Even with shipping plants within the USA we find great differences between the requirements set by different states. Based on casual observations, it seems that countries and states with colder climates seem less concerned with the importation of insects and diseases.

I had passed information on to Chong previously from a friend of mine who is working on a USDA project in India right now. He was hoping to import some items back to the USA and I was hoping to get him to possibly ship some banana plants (especially since he is going to visit a friend with something like 390 different types), but he reported he had been told a phytosanitary certificate would cost about US$400 to obtain. This made me wonder how Dr. Parmar could ship plants to us in the USA for so much less and when I received his e-mail (addressed to Chong) explaining he could not obtain a phytosanitary certificate, it explained the lower cost. While Dr. Parmar did not indicate the cost for the phytosanitary certificate, he did say it would require considerable travel and take more than one day.

If Jack is able to get a phytosanitary certificate from his government authorities for a modest fee, it may be best for us USA folks wanting to try the Hill Banana to get a group order shipped from Jack next year (unless he kills them all with his experiments with abundant frost!). Since states such as California require certificates that plants shipped from certain warm states (i.e., the deep south) are free of nematodes, it would still probably be best that the plants be shipped to a place like Chong in Washington since they can then be forwarded to others easily. I'm in no hurry to try the Hill Banana, so I don't care if I get one in the first round or not.

This sort of reminds me of another more difficult importation project I have been involved in. As many of you know, I grow chestnuts on my farm (among other things) and in late 2001 I decided I wanted to import some chestnuts from various sources. There are Federal restrictions which indicate that chestnuts can only be imported to a USDA station and held in quarantine for 3 years due to concerns with the blight virus. Then there are California regulations that also are concerned the blight virus as well as an oak wilt virus. The USDA indicated they would probably go along with whatever the California Department of Agriculture authorities decided. The CDFA staff told me that they would want the material quarantined for 5 years in a greenhouse and that they might want to require that it be located in the desert far away from any potential hosts. This was discouraging so I contacted someone I knew at a high level in a university and she got things moving quickly. An industry agency agreed to take care of importing the material and the quarantine. For this, they would charge $1,000 per cultivar. Fortunately, a nursery trade group agreed to fund the project and a meeting was held and various people submitted proposals for cultivars to be imported. These materials were released to me and a friend earlier this year and everyone else besides one other friend has forgotten about them. It amazes me to think that some of my recent grafts cost well over $100 each!!! Still, this shows that very difficult obstacles can still be overcome.

Unfortunately, I don't believe we can get any nursery group interested in sponsoring the importation of expensive bananas. It does look like Jack could be a good source next year, though.

Thanks for trying, Chong!

Harvey

__________________

Jack Daw

So it means you can ship whatever amounts of whatever with certiphicate for whatever purposes?

Harvey, I would just like to correct some information. Slovakia is an agricultural superpower in Europe. Along with Ukraine we supplied almost all the food crops and water to the whole Eastern block. Not only that, but we had so much left that we send about 1/2 of what we harvested to African countries (Eastern block + many African countries) for consumption as "harvest unable to be stocked dut o lack of space!".
In the souther Slovakia, lots of subtropical plants can be grown with adequate winter protection.
The mere fact that we don't do anything right now is, that we are obligated not to grow anything by EU. They firstly donated us with money to agriculture, but then, after we took it, forbade us to grow anything, but what they dictate (and so the only growing there is in Slovakia is made by individual farmers and in the gardens). And we import bad tomatoes from Spain (half of them rotts even before it gets to us) and other plant materials from other EU countries, that have more powerful votes in EU.
At least the soil rests for now. To conclude, we have one fo the best yieldieng soils in the world (Chernozem - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia).

More to that, the package from Dr. Parmar was labelled "not for commercial use" and people at the CLO ZOLL thought it would be for my personal collection in my greenhouse (not grown outdoors).
Except for that, they kept it in various solutios to kill all the possible insects and bacteria. Tropical diseases are no problem in this part of region, because humidity and highest temperatures don't allow them to evolve, so no prob there. Howver there are parasites particularily in this region, which could be devastating in more tropcical conditions.

The phytosanitary certiphicate shouldn't be a problem, I just have to go to our Agricultural association and they will make all the necessary testing for reasonable price hopefully. Anyways, I wanted to maybe try TCing of my own, so I will see, if I have enough spare time during summer to study and autumn to try something out..

__________________
Thnx to Marcel, Ante, Dr. Chiranjit Parmar and Francesco for the plants I've received.



Zeitgeist - Corporatocracy 101 (~2hrs)

Zeitgeist - Moving Forward (~2.5hrs)

chong

With a permit and phytosanitary certificate, you can import any amount of plant materials that are not prohibited and within the size limitations. Examples of prohibited materials are seed plants of: Ipomoea aquatica, cannabis(marijuana), Papaver somniferum (opium poppy), Erythroxylum coca, certain GMO plants, bamboo, etc. You cannot import a very large tree.

The nice thing about it is that only one certificate is required per shipment. So, if you have a shipping containerful of plants, as long as each plant is properly identified on the permit and the certificate, only one certificate is required.

Jack Daw

That's very interesting. Did you have to pay for it once, or do you pay annualy?
Papaver somniferum grows like a weed here, even though it's forbidden and illegal to grow in a large scale, it grows all over the place, at the roads, in the parks, it's very vigorous in here, don't know why though.

__________________
Thnx to Marcel, Ante, Dr. Chiranjit Parmar and Francesco for the plants I've received.



Zeitgeist - Corporatocracy 101 (~2hrs)

Zeitgeist - Moving Forward (~2.5hrs)

chong

I believe that here in the US and in the Philippines, you pay for each overseas shipment because they do have to inspect each shipment. Local larger companies shipping plant materials domestically may have the option of paying an annual fee.

Papaver somniferum is the source of opium which is processed into heroine. There are vegetable and ornamental poppies. The poppy seeds are used in pastries. With some companies here in the US, they have mandatory drug testing of new employees. The instruction sheet they give you, for preparations before the testing, says not consume anything with poppy seeds several days, or weeks, before the test. This is because those poppy seeds contain opium-like substances in them, and will trigger the sensor if you ate poppy seeds prior to the test.

harveyc

Jack, I tried to word my comment carefully but I guess I was not careful enough. I did not intend to imply that Slovakia does not have a significant agricultural industry. I just said that many countries to not have strict import laws, especially if they do not have major agricultural industries. I don't know why Slovakia is less strict on import restrictions. I know that someone was able to import chestnuts into Greenland without any troubles at all, though getting them to grow was more of a challenge.

__________________

bigdog

I also have a permit from USDA. I actually have 2 of them; one is the "Small Lots of Seeds" permit, which allows you to import up to 50 packets of seeds, 50 seeds per packet, as long as it isn't a prohibited species, without a phyto. The other permit is the one that chong has (PPQ 587). The permit is good for 3 years, and is free. It was not difficult to obtain.

I haven't imported anything from India yet, but from what I am told by contacts in India, it isn't that difficult or expensive to obtain a phyto. Perhaps Dr. Parmar just needs to go to a nursery to facilitate this! Good luck with it. I'd like to try this banana also!

Frank

asacomm

Hello Jack Daw,

As I wrote some days ago, it is absoluely impossible to import any musa
pups into my country Japan without the phytosanitary certificate and the
nematode-free certificate both authorised by the government of exportation.

And now I do understood the difficult situation of obtaining these certificates
in India from the cost and timing point of view, and I should admit a direct
import of the pups from India is thus almost impossible.

So if you don't mind, could please list my mane on the indirect import planing
that the US banana friends are talking about?
Thanks.

harveyc

Slovakia, the new banana import/export capital of the world!

__________________

51st state

Phyto certs in India are not expensive and (for export driven nurseries at least) are easy to obtain. When importing Musa into the EU there are certain additional declarations which must be added to the standard Phyto, best to check with your own country's Min. of Agri. and customs, prior to placing any orders.

__________________
a>

Jack Daw

No, it wasn't offensive, I just felt like explaining our situation to someone out of the Europe. We are just a shade of what we were. The real problem is, that only the oldest of us can remember the traditional way of gardening and growing in the Slovakia. And there's only a small group of young people, that feels the need to learn it. That's what bothers me. If it goes like this for another 20 years, we might never get to being that agriculturaly develped, as before. 1300 years of agriculture in this region and away for what. For some donations by EU? Well thank ou very much.
So this is what I hate about EU, it just makes certain decisions, that are in favor of more populated countries. Fortunatelly, not only our people are beginning to notice that. We just have to preserve our knowledge and once we will be needing it again, in much larger scale.

If I promised any more pup, I would be lying. One is going to my friend, who so kindly gave me another pups long time ago, one is to my friend in Croatia... If I am lucky, and I hope I will be, all the plants (5) will put out an offshot eventually. But of these, 3 have already it's owners. Therefore, the first available pups, that will be, will probably be sent to US, for TCing. If you don't get your hands on one and/or it would take long to get you one from US, I will gladly give it to you, but guys, im Zone 7b/8a, there's a limit to my weather as to what I can do.

Nay, just might have been too lucky this time.

__________________
Thnx to Marcel, Ante, Dr. Chiranjit Parmar and Francesco for the plants I've received.



Zeitgeist - Corporatocracy 101 (~2hrs)

Zeitgeist - Moving Forward (~2.5hrs)