Fruit Industry In Review

Fruit Industry Review. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Fruit Grower Report.

The tree fruit industry in 2009 will be remembered for a lot of fruit, especially when it came to cherries. Unfortunately the cherry season was late and that cost many growers.

THURLBY: We didn’t really pick our first cherry until around the 14^th or 15^th of June so we missed two weeks on the front end and we’ve picked in 58 days of shipping so far this season about 18.5 million boxes or 185 thousand tons.

Another issue that really seemed to heat up was the H2A guest worker program. Farm Bureau’s Dan Fazio spent a lot of time working the issue

FAZIO: FAZIO: The Obama Administration looks like it’s going to rescind the new H2A guest worker rules for farmers. These are rules that allow farmers to get legal and stable workforce. Very, very good rules, had protections for workers, had protections for the employers to encourage the farmer to use the program to bring in guest workers.

In March Mexico retaliated against the U.S. over a decision to scrap a test program that allowed Mexican trucks to use U.S. highways to deliver goods - Mexico will apply tariffs of 10 to 45-percent on at least 90 U.S. products. Washington Congressman Doc Hastings.

HASTINGS: The Mexican government has said we want to work with you but we’re only going to negotiate with the person in charge and that would be former Gov. Gary Locke but he has not been confirmed as Commerce Secretary so we are in limbo right now.

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