California agricultural shippers look to passenger service changes

SHIPPERS of high value agricultural products are keeping a sharp eye out for changes in air travel, says a leading scholar and trade specialist, reports the Boston-based Logistics Management magazine.

Most of these goods move in bellies of passenger aircraft - not cargo planes," says Bert Mason, California's Fresno State University agricultural economics chairman. "That's why we focus on issues related to the whole airline industry when taking this into consideration."

Far East destinations are tops with Japan ranking as the single largest market, the authors found. South Korea, China and Taiwan are in the top 10 overseas markets. The second and third largest customers are the United Kingdom and Australia.

Dr Mason, together with colleague Jack O'Connell, wrote "The Role of Air Cargo in California's Agricultural Export Trade: A 2007 Update," a study that shows California's airborne food exports were 24.5 per cent higher in 2006 than 10 years earlier.

"One purpose of this study was to draw attention to the unique role of air cargo in reaching lucrative and expanding overseas markets, otherwise inaccessible to specialty crop growers in this state," said Dr Mason.

"While ocean carriers would certainly like to capture more of this export commodity, it still has to move by air to arrive at inland destinations on time," he said.

One of the major concerns, he says, is that a single terrorist attack could weaken the supply chain. "Should anyone succeed in planting an explosive device in the cargo hold of a passenger airliner, the US Congress may act to either ban third-party freight from passenger aircraft or require such onerous inspection procedures as to make shipping perishable produce aboard passenger aircraft no longer viable," he said.