Grape Report Oops

Grape Report Oops. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Fruit Grower Report.

Recently the National Ag Statistics Service released their grape report and after reviewing it some industry leaders started scratching their heads. David Knopf, Director of the NASS Washington office explains.

KNOPF: When we released the initial report in January we got some feedback from the wine or grape grower industry that indicated that they thought we were reporting far more grapes crushed than actually could have been grown here in the state and so we took a look at our data again to try to figure out whether we had an error in our report or whether we could somehow explain why there was a difference between what they were thinking and what our report said.

Knopf admits that there was indeed an error.

KNOPF: What we ended up finding out is that we had some duplication in the data that had been reported which resulted in us lowering the tons of grapes that were crushed then this year.

There was also a question as to why the prices didn’t change as a result.

KNOPF: The reason for that is when we make our price computations we only include reports that show both a quantity and a dollars paid. And it turns out when they were originally reported as duplicates they didn’t have dollars paid associated with them so they weren’t used in the price computation anyway

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