WENATCHEE, Wash. — Shippers continue to sell significantly fewer Washington-grown apples than average into international markets due to the short apple crop, inflation, tariffs and supply chain snarls.

Faced with some of the lowest export volumes in 20 years, growers are rethinking apple destinations and market opportunities.

On Thursday, leaders of the Washington Apple Commission — the organization that promotes the state’s apples in international markets — decided to create a subcommittee focused on developing a strategy for future exports.

“As an industry, we will continue to export. We’re in a period of low exports, but it will change,” said West Mathison, president of Stemilt Growers and a commissioner. Mathison will serve on the new export strategy subcommittee.

In recent months, industry leaders have focused on shipping apples into what Todd Fryhover, the commission’s president, calls the “home court” — the U.S., Mexico and Canada.

The new export road map will likely focus more on Cosmic Crisp and less on Red Delicious, a trend that has been developing for years.

In 2014, according to industry data, Washington exported 44 million boxes of Red Delicious; in 2022, growers harvested just 13 million boxes, much of which has been absorbed by the domestic market.

One of the many factors that has led growers to move away from Reds is limited access to India’s market in recent years. The Red Delicious variety is popular in India, and in 2014, more than 7 million boxes of Reds went to India alone.

In 2017, Washington apple exports across all varieties hit $120 million in India, but in 2018, the Trump administration put a steel and aluminum tariff on India, and the country retaliated by putting an additional 20% tariff on U.S. apple imports. As a result, American growers have exported significantly fewer apples to India the past few years. Last season, they exported barely $3 million.

At the Washington Apple Commission meeting, industry leaders expressed cautious optimism that the India situation may improve in the coming months because several members of Congress, including Sens. Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray, both D-Wash., have recently taken up the cause of advocating for the industry.

Growers at the meeting said the senators may put “political horsepower” behind the movement to break back into India’s market.

“It was good to hear Cantwell had some positive discussions with India. We all hope it leads to something,” said Bob Mast, president of Wenatchee-based CMI Orchards and a commissioner.

The commissioners, however, acknowledged they can’t count on India anymore and will need to continue strategizing new export markets.

The challenge for the remainder of this year will be running international marketing campaigns on a limited budget. The commission, which runs the campaigns, is funded by growers’ assessments of 3.5 cents per box. Because the 2022 crop was unusually small, the commission is on a tighter budget this year.

The return of normal crop sizes should buoy the commission’s ability to do its promotional work, said Cass Gebbers, president of Gebbers Farms and a commissioner.