Talking About the Hort Convention

Talking About the Hort Convention. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Fruit Grower Report.

Walking around the Washington State Horticultural Association's 105th Annual Convention and NW Hort Expo you hear a lot of great stories and some of them are even true! BJ Thurlby with NW Cherries will be telling a few stories this year about the 2009 cherry growing season.

THURLBY: There was not any growing district that didn’t have a full crop and it was literally 14 – 15 days later than where it normally would be. Really we started to peak at the point where we couldn’t ship it out over the 4^th of July and that’s the number one issue. I think we just missed our number one weekend of sales with the brunt of our crop.

That was one year and what the 2010 crop will be is anyone’s guess.

THURLBY: You know that’s part of the game of being in agriculture, you never do have an answer for that. You just to persevere and some years things work out pretty well and you can actually guarantee you are going to have supper on the table 12 months later and this year was just one of those years where everybody looked at the crop and said well, I’ve got a crop, this is great and as it worked out we sold the whole thing over 45 days which normally you get 85 to 90.

Some of the best discussions will in panel settings at the convention.

THURLBY: One of the questions is going to be what do you think was some of the key, critical issues that happened during the cherry season? And you’re looking at the retail sales throughout the United States are down 7%, our crop was up 120%, then you look at unemployment at 10% nationally and you just wonder what is the trickle down effect of that?

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