The export of Dutch sweet peppers to the United States halved in 2020. Roughly 8 million kilograms crossed the Atlantic compared to the 16 million kilograms in 2019, as shown in the yearly report from the Quality Control Bureau (KCB).
The KCB already noticed a decline in the amount of authenticated phytosanitary certificates for exporting vegetable goods abroad. As a reason for the decline, relative to 2019, the KCB points to the coronavirus, which led to a decline in air freight shipments to distant destinations.
Phyto-requirements to export
In 2020, companies only registered with the KCB for the business monitoring programs sweet pepper/pepper for export to the US and fruit vegetables to Japan.
The US sets additional requirements for the import of sweet pepper and pepper from the Netherlands. Products need to be free of African codling moth. Japan has its own set of requirements for, among others, sweet pepper to be free of Medfly and tomatoes of Tuta absoluta. The same goes for Canada and the US, requiring export products to be free of Tuta absoluta when it comes to tomatoes.
Decline in sweet pepper export to the US
For the US, 124 cultivation locations (121 sweet pepper and 3 pepper) registered and 21 export locations. For eighteen of the cultivations locations, this was the first time registering. The amount of cultivations locations has been through a small decline, from 132 to 124 locations. Because of this, the acreage declined as well, from 915 ha to 887 ha. The sweet pepper export halved, from 16 million kilograms in 2019 to 8 million kilograms in 2020.
Despite the decline in numbers, a large exporter indicated earlier this year that the export will always continue despite corona. “Even shortly after the initial shock of the coronavirus, the air freight shipments to the United States have always continued. Space was always kept available.”, says Marco Bergman of Harvest House.
Similar decline in export to Japan
For Japan, there are 49 cultivation locations (27 sweet pepper, 1 pepper, 6 tomato, and 15 strawberry) registered and 4 export locations. The export to Japan has dropped less significantly than export to the US. In 2020, around 3 million kilograms of sweet pepper were exported to Japan (2019: 4.3 million Kilograms), about 636.000 kilograms of tomatoes (2019: 706.000kg), and 258.000 kilograms of strawberries (2019: 317.000 kilograms).
For more information:
Quality-Control-Bureau 
www.kcb.nl
kcb@kcb.nl