Updated Apple Outlook
Updated Apple Outlook. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Fruit Grower Report.
The 2010 apple crop is of course already in the books but those numbers keep changing according to Todd Fryhover with the Washington Apple Commission.
FRYHOVER: You know we’d anticipated a crop of “X”, whatever it was and we’re having better packouts and excellent demand and what had turned out to be not a record crop is now turning out to be a record crop.
Based on projections of the number of packed boxes each remaining bin of fruit will yield, total shipments will exceed 108.6 million boxes. The old record of 108.3 was set back in 2008. And there is a question of what will happen when the free trade agreements are completed.
FRYHOVER: Columbia we could definitely see doubling compared to last year, that’s a no-brainer. Korea there’s probably not going to be a tremendous affect initially because they have a very large apple crop themselves. It could be a real boom for cherry growers. Panama will obviously be a real benefit for us so it would be wonderful to have those free trade agreements through Congress and approved.
He reminds us though that there is still a issue with the Mexican truck deal.
FRYHOVER: But we’re still not down that road yet so we need to continue to put pressure on to find a way to get the Mexican pilot truck program solved so that we can eliminate that 20% tariff that we’ve been faced with now for several months on Washington apples going down into Mexico.
That’s today’s Fruit Grower Report. I’m Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.
