Congratulations, John. That was a lot of work to get to this place. Let us know how it all goes with your agents. It is an amazingly complex process. And so interesting to see how different things are for commercial growers, versus us hobbyists. Who is the lovely lady helping you hold the box of very lovely and large Meyer lemons??

Patty S.

That lady is the owner/founder of Frutesa, S.A. the most experienced, most prestigious exporter of Guatemala to Europe. She is part of my "path"... I am a Taoist... the only reason she agreed to work with me, is she is a lifelong friend of my wife, who is also a stellar player on the Guatemalan scene. Come down and see for yourself how special this place is.

John

John

I dont know anything about import/export other than things magically appear here. I imagine its a fairly tedious process.

any chance your meyers will make it to the US?

mike

I can't ship my Meyers into any citrus producing area of the US. That's politics mostly. I am exploring shipping them to Wilmington, Delaware, a North Atlantic port; if we can do that, we can tranship to Canada and maybe supply the larger East coast markets. Don't know about Oklahoma; but it is not a citrus producing area, so it could be possible. Our initial entre into the markets will be Europe; the demand is huge there and prices generally higher than US markets.

Well, I must say that I am very proud of your hard work. Congrats John and by the way, you are looking pretty dapper, almost wealthy..:-)

Many happy congrats John:_))

Mike

Beautiful Meyers, John! Congratulations on achieving your goal of introducing your lemons to Europe.

Which countries are you exporting to?

Congratulations! Nice lemons. I think it's cool that you got Dianne Feinstein to pose with you as well. *wink*

All I can say job well done.

Abe

Not to be a Debbie Downer but i thought Taoists were not supposed to exploit nature?

The same thing is happening across the Pet�n region, which extends across the northern half of the country to the border with Belize and Mexico. According to the latest report from the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) published at the end of 2010, Guatemala has experienced the most rapid deforestation of any country over the last five years.

In 2010, primary forest accounted for 1.6m hectares, compared with 2.4m 20 years earlier. Guatemala, which, after Brazil, has South America's second-largest rainforest cover, lost an average of 27,000 hectares a year between 2000 and 2005 (a rate of 1.32% per year), increasing to 68,000 hectares a year between 2005 and 2010 (3.72% per year), meaning that the rate of deforestation has almost trebled in the course of a decade.

Rainforest deforestation for Large scale meyer farming? No thanx...

No offense, I love citrus but I love black earth and rainforest a whole lot more. If your not familiar with the term "black earth of the amazon" just do a google search and you will see why it is such a good thing.

Over farming, deforestation and use of chelated/chemical fertlizer has drained the soil DRY of any nutrients other than what the farmer throws down. And what soil hasnt been abused now, it will be dry in the next coming years..

Im not saying your responsible for any of that John but its something to think about...

Nice lemons btw...

So before this turns into a thread bashing john similar to one that happened last year I have a question.

I dont know what Taoist's believe or if they dont want to "exploit nature"

One thing I do know is not once has John said he cut down any trees to plant his. I do know that once John did mention his farm was on an old cattle farm. I dont know about anywhere else but here cattle farms dont have many trees. So assuming his nursery is located where there may have not been many trees to begin with wouldn't planting trees be a good thing?

Mike

For the record, at my small 10 acre lemon farm which is the first of more to come, there are now 3,162 more trees than there were when I bought it; and that doesn't include 5,000 nursery trees waiting to be planted. In addition, I have created 11 new jobs in a poor community where the middle class people have bicycles.

Mike, after what happened to me here last year, I have adopted a new policy... Never engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed person.

John

John

I dont blame you one bit. You just keep growing those good looking meyers

Mike