The Politics of The Pomegranate

As the global trading system begins to recover, BardPolitik traces the route of various commodities to American shelves, including the suddenly popular pomegranate. By Sue Gloor.

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By Sue Gloor

Always in search of the next health food craze, Americans have recently rallied behind foods considered antioxidant-rich, exotic or cleansing. Much to the delight of foreign exporters, the pomegranate, a fruit never widely produced in the United States, fits this “superfood” label.

For centuries the pomegranate has been a culinary staple in Asia, the Mediterranean and the Middle East, but it did not arrive in the United States until the 1700s, thanks to Spanish explorers.

Over the years pomegranates have grown in popularity in America, which was slow to appreciate the health benefits and versatility of the fruit. With a re-focus on the eating habits of those in foreign countries, pomegranates have caught on in the US and become a novelty, so much so that a domestic market has developed within recent years.

But even with the fruit’s break into the US market and its steady exportation to countries abroad, America still relies on imports to meet the countrywide demand. Likewise, though regions with large pomegranate crops once heavily exported the fruit to America at the cusp of its craze, foreign exporters are experiencing a slow but definite decline in US importation of pomegranates due to America’s own attempt at cultivation.

Some pomegranates grow in Southern areas of the US, but the bulk of the commodity is overwhelmingly a product of California, specifically California’s San Joaquin Valley.

“California also dominates in the production of other non-citrus crops, ranking at the top in terms of the acreage for…pomegranates at 99 percent,” according to the US Department of Agriculture. This number is increasing, since from 2002 to 2007 the overall acreage designated for pomegranates in the US rose 62.3 percent, from 369 to 599 farms.

Seventy-five percent of this crop is sold within the US, with the remaining share exported around the world by California growers. Recipients of these exports include Asian countries like Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore, as well as areas of the Middle East and Mexico, according to the Pomegranate Council, an organization founded in 1995 to promote American consumption of the fruit.

The Autenrieth Company, an Agoura Hills, CA business that began exporting fresh produce in 1976, has been exporting pomegranates for many years to New Zealand and Japan, according to President Robert Autenrieth. Autenrieth explained that the company has not yet experienced difficulty exporting US pomegranates, even with high production elsewhere in the world.

“Our volumes have been very consistent over the years, and we would be quite surprised to find that [New Zealand’s and Japan’s] import volumes have decreased,” he said.

Perhaps, then, the market is shifting.

Since 1995, annual sales of pomegranates in the US have almost doubled, from 600,000 to over 1 million 28-count boxes per year, according to the Pomegranate Council.

This is with good reason, as the number of food and drink products that contain pomegranate has increased from 258 in 2005 to over 1,800 in 2009, according to the market research firm DataMonitor.

“Consumers continue to increase demand for pomegranates domestically, and export demand continues to grow as well,” the council claims, probably since California has been able to cultivate efficiently due to a temperate, dry climate conducive to growing the product.

Indeed, US Department of Agriculture shipment data shows little decisive fluctuation in units of Californian pomegranates shipped across the US over the past decade. In 2000 at the introduction of the fruit’s popularity in the West, 149 100,000-lb units of pomegranates were trucked from California’s valleys to other states; in 2008, that number increased to 163 units. So in addition to steady exports of US pomegranates worldwide, California is supplying domestically, too.

This implies that the US’s reliance on foreign imports of the exotic product may truly be waning, though direct reasons why are still evasive.

Regardless, there are clues that indicate that a retreat from US dependence on foreign produce is in fact a national goal. The California Agricultural Export Council, a non-profit organization, was created in 1995 to promote Californian produce worldwide with the help of the US Department of Agriculture’s Foreign Agricultural Service.

The Export Council is mounting a sustained push to bring US competitiveness up in the international pomegranate market—something that may be necessary as America finds itself doing business with countries that have grown pomegranates extensively for decades.

Nonica & Partners, a produce export company in Ventura, CA, was forced to abandon its pomegranate export efforts after being undercut in the trade system. The company primarily exported San Joaquin Valley pomegranates to Japan, but was unable to remain competitive.

“Japanese importers started importing from Israel instead of from us back then. It was about cost,” Owner Masa Omomo said, adding that the Japanese also grow a limited volume of their own domestic pomegranates.

Other American programs besides the Export Council have been formed to reduce the likelihood of Nonica & Partners’s situation occurring among other US export businesses.

The Department of Agriculture’s Market Access Program (MAP) has been around since 1985 to assist agribusinesses in gaining a global presence, but its Branded Program has been created more recently. The Branded Program is funded through the Department and reimburses businesses up to 50 percent for promoting their agricultural products abroad.

And pomegranate exports have been the recipient of this funding in the past. In 1996, Californian pomegranate exports to Japan increased by 22 percent.

According to the Foreign Agricultural Service, “a large portion of the credit for this Japanese volume increase can be attributed to the MAP funded promotion plan.”

“[The Department of Agriculture’s] Market Access Program (MAP) plays an instrumental role in our efforts to assist American agriculture and our processors in competing internationally,” W. Kirk Miller, general sales manager at Foreign Agricultural Service, said in a statement before the House Small Business Committee in 2007.

So while there may be no admitted political reasons for pushing the growth of the pomegranate market in America, there are definitely economic ones. The US has created specific programs to promote US agricultural competitiveness worldwide, and these initiatives are being used with regard to pomegranate cultivation.

Though some companies have unfortunately had to forego the exportation of Californian pomegranates due to another country’s larger production, the US is holding its own in this new fruit niche. With pomegranate exports and domestic shipments on the rise, the US is a supplier to be considered in the future.