2008 Crops in the Rear View
2008 Crops in the Rear View. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Fruit Grower Report.
Bruce Grimm, Executive Director of the Washington State Horticultural Association had the opportunity last week to address his peers at the Hort’s annual convention in
GRIMM: Well production and everyone will go, well duh, this is a no-brainer in a sense. Acreage drives how much volume we have. (There’s) never been a time in the history of the industry when acreage has gone up and production has gone down. By and large the apple acreage has stayed relatively flat between ’93 and 2006.
Grimm says while acreage has not changed much we are being more productive.
GRIMM: The number can be a little deceptive because my guess is the 170 some thousand acres that were in the ground in 2006 were an awful lot more productive volume wise than what those acres in 1993 were, the 172 thousand. Pears, the good news here is I guess that were relatively flat. Pear acreage hasn’t changed. The old growing pears for your heirs seems to have scared a lot of people off and we’re not planting a lot of new acres of pears out there so we are seeing relatively stable production.
The industry has seen an increase in acreage devoted to cherries.
GRIMM: What’s the takeaway from this last year’s crop about the cherries? I would say three things. Horticulturally; prune like the dickens, got to have fruit size. I haven’t heard anybody talk about the fact that we just had too darn many big cherries. But I sure hear the opposite.
More tomorrow with Bruce Grimm.
That’s today’s Fruit Grower Report. I’m Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.
