11/10/08 What A Crop!

What A Crop! I'm Greg Martin with today's Fruit Grower Report. This is one for the record books. The 2008 apple crop is a whopper. Todd Fryhover with the Washington Apple Commission. FRYHOVER: This estimate is just not even 10% over; I mean the crop report is not even 10% over estimate. We are good! I tell you what; we have just did a fantastic job. That seems to be the sentiment all over the state as the crop reports is showing some great numbers. FRYHOVER: With all the frost issues and the cold weather we had in the spring and then come up with a number like this is somewhat surprising however like I indicated before it's less than a 10% increase and if you really, really focus at the numbers and look at the estimate compared to the November 1st grower report 2.5 million are an increase in Golden Delicious which makes perfect sense because of the shorter crops we've had in the last 2 years and then Granny's are up 2 million. According to Fryhover everything else is pretty close to estimate. Oh. What is the total estimate? A record 109 million boxes of apples! Some growers are even having a shortage of bins to put the apples in but most have not had issues with labor this year. FRYHOVER: The one thing that's going on out there too of course is as we're renewing our orchards to match the varieties we grow with consumer demand we're putting in higher color varieties that pack out better, we're putting in more trees per acre and some of those things don't necessarily get figured into crop estimating but we're not surprised by these numbers at all. That's today's Fruit Grower Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.