More on Stone Fruit Harvest

A listeria scare at the beginning of the season in California caused a few woes for fruit growers in Washington and the northwest. BJ Thurlby with the Washington State Fruit Commission says it was tough for producers for a while.

THURLBY: The hard part was, from the California standpoint, they basically made the decision themselves, the growers down there that had the issue and it's questionable as to even whether they had an issue. There was a teeny bit of listeria found on a product that was exported. It was accepted into the country of it's destination because it was far below any levels of potential health risk to consumers. But at the same time you know one problem can absolutely create havoc and put people completely out of business in a hurry.

But once northwest product started appearing on shelves it soon became business as usual although this year's harvest probably won't go down in the record books.

THURLBY: I would say this was just a good sized, average crop this year. We're going to ship when it's all said and done between apricots, peaches, nectarines, prunes and plums close to 4-million boxes and that's just a nice sized crop for us. We're into the best fruit of the season when we get to this point of the summer and you have all these late, high color varieties. I'm seeing fruit in the marketplace that is just flat out gorgeous.

There is one exception to the non-record crop.

THURLBY: We did have a record crop in terms of apricots. The apricot crop this year was close to 750-thousand boxes.

That's today's Fruit Grower Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.