Leaving Fruit

This year's apple harvest is a big one. There is a lot of really great fruit coming off the trees and in a lot of cases, a lot of fruit is being left behind. Valent USA's crop advisor, Byron Phillips says so far this harvest has been pretty smooth.

PHILLIPS: A lot smoother than I anticipated with as big as the crop is but we're leaving a lot more fruit in the field than I thought we would. It's the right decision, it's the right thing to do but gosh it's hard to see all that in other years we'd deliver and make a profit on, it's hard to see all that being left out there.

Phillips talks about why this fruit is being left.

PHILLIPS: Most of it, honestly, is being left because of tight supply of bins more so than the labor issue. We really haven't had the labor issue that we could of but bin supply is tight and so guys are having to say can I really tie up these bins this black of Reds into Tree Top or somewhere to make juice out of that probably isn't going to return me what it costs to pick them.

It's a very interesting problem to have but overall Phillips says the fruit this year is looking very good.

PHILLIPS: Quality is good. I'm starting to see some watercore but that's about it. Everything else internally seems to be holding up really well and with the weather that we're getting now things are coloring really well so the quality of the fruit that's being delivered to the packing houses is really good quality and it needs to be in order to turn a profit.

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