I started seling cuttings on EBAY earlier this year and each day I get requests, mostly from southeast Asia for people willing to pay anything to receive fig cuttings.  I'm curious if anyone here is set up to send cuttings outside the US, because I would love to refer all these folks to a seller capable of negotiating that terrain, which I assume means phyto-sanitation permits, etc.

Perhaps Jon P. - not sure .

Check with your local usda office for advice on this.  You can always recommend them to Baud in France, he might be able to sell them cuttings or plants depending on the laws in their countries and his.

Its a hassle trust me. There is a high mortality rate and if they arrive moldy the customer wants you to send them more or they will give you negative feedback. Its very costly especially with shipping and reshipping new cuttings.

I've done several and it's worked out okay.  But it is more work and I'm not looking for any more referrals.

You can edit your account on eBay so that your listings don't show up when buyers outside of the USA do a search.  I can't find out how to do that right now; I had someone on eBay walk me through to make those changes.

Generally speaking it is illegal for any foreign country to import cuttings without an import permit and a phytosanitary certificate from the USDA. Cuttings shipped to Europe have to be quarantined ON the tree for 60 days and inspected and treated, along with an import permit and a phyto.

it is a nightmare to navigate, but the info is here is you want to dig into it.

I don't know about figs but I shipped fairly large orders of pomegranate cuttings to both Italy and Portugal and import permits were not required, just a USDA phyto.  They were inspected and released.  A couple of years ago when I shipped to some other EU country (forget which), they were required to have an import permit then.  Things change!  USDA Davis was not able to meet conditions of a USDA phyto for pom cuttings to Italy because their operations are not inspected annually by the Ag Commissioner's office...go figure.  They are looking into maybe changing that.

I've shipped to Mexico and Africa before and remember treatment for mealy bugs being required even on dormant cuttings sent to Mexico, don't remember much else (been a while).  The guy in Mexico did have an import permit and maybe the guy in Africa did also.

I don't do much digging, I let the buyer tell me if they have checked into the requirements and then let my ag department check into it.

It usually turns into more work than I expect but not that bad.

Hi Beyondista,
I live in Malaysia and I know a lot of members of Fig Tree Malaysia ordered cuttings from ebay. It is very hard to get cuttings in Malaysia and they are too expensive per cutting. Even the common ones will cost around USD 20-30. The young plant around 6 inches tall costs around USD40 or more. My friends are willing to take the risk of cuttings being confiscated by the customs since it is still cheaper than buying a USD 30 per cutting only to lose them to fungus and gnats. I have been very lucky since some very kind hearted members of this forum donated some cuttings to me. I have been sharing them with some members of Fig Tree Malaysia and hopefully as time goes by, fig cuttings will not be too expensive for everyone to enjoy them. No doubt some will order from ebay and resell them to others. Of course we need to have import permits and phyto cert to import cuttings but these people are willing to take the chance of cuttings going through the customs without being confiscated.

Norhayati

As a member live in China, I can provided some personal comments regarding ship the cutting to overseas/receive the cutting from overseas.

1. I do agree with Jon's point that it is illegal for any foreign country to import cuttings without an import permit and a phytosanitary certificate. But that's really difficult for a person to apply an import permit individually in China, the most workable way would be to find a agent company to settle it, but it would cost hundreds of USD for 1 shipment(part of money is paid for the permit & part of money is paid for the agent fee). If it's just a personal hobby, it really cost too much. So most of time, we choose to do something "illegally".

2. The worst situation for us would be - the package inspected by customs & get destroyed, the only loss for us is the cutting cost & shipping cost, no extra penalty from customs.

3. I used to received a package from USA which was inspected by US customs, so it seems that there is no restriction for the cuttings export from US to overseas.

4. I've sent out several packages this year to France, USA & Canada with no issue, some of them even was not the cuttings but the little trees. So I have to say the general inspection rate won't be quite high & most of us would be the lucky guy.

So, we can see that most of ebay seller would indicate it as - it should be buyer's responsibility to understand their country's law for the importation, that would be treated as a term of the deal.