Tree Fruit Trends

Tree Fruit Trends. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Fruit Grower Report.

Earlier this year Northwest Farm Credit Services conducted a survey with the tree fruit industry and during the recent Hort convention in Wenatchee Jeff Fagg with NW Farm Credit presented the results. He began by discussing the why.

FAGG: Why was the survey important to Northwest Farm Credit? First off we have relationships with about 50% of the warehouse industry in the Pacific Northwest and about 20% of the tree fruit growers. And the tree fruit industry comprises about 6% of our total portfolio.

NW Farm Credit uses a lot of the information as they develop their business models.

FAGG: The other reason the survey was a natural fit was the establishment of the knowledge center within our company. And this is about the third year now, and it’s really an initiative where we gather, develop and distribute industry information and that’s really to the benefit of ourselves internally, our customers and other outside audiences.

He says timing might have been better.

FAGG: We hadn’t fully digested the impact the meltdown of the global financial markets of that time, hadn’t really digested maybe how rough the export situation was going to be and then certainly hadn’t digested fully the impact of 2008 apple sizing and pricing.

Tomorrow we’ll look at some of the results.

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