2011 Apple Crop Update

2011 Apple Crop Update. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Fruit Grower Report.

Apples are coming off the trees as the 2011 harvest is underway. Todd Fryhover, President of the Washington Apple Commission says things do look good.

FRYHOVER: We’re a couple of weeks into harvest. You know Gala’s are - gotta be almost complete; Honeycrisp harvest is getting near the end and Golden’s are going at full tilt. There’s a number of packers out there right now that are harvesting Reds and Granny’s and Fuji’s to fill the pipeline. There’s a tremendous amount of demand right now so things look really good.

At the moment, everything is going along rather nicely but Fryhover says they are always being vigilant.

FRYHOVER: There’s always challenges out there, there’s no question about that and those challenges sometimes don’t rear their head until we’re into the season but we’re pretty optimistic looking at this season. The markets are healthy and in a lot of cases the weak U.S. dollar or the continuation of the weak U.S. dollar is making our products more reasonably priced.

Prices for apples has been very good for producers this season and one event yet to come this season will help that price along.

FRYHOVER: Mexico hopefully very soon will have their first Mexican truck cross the border so the additional 10% duty will come off so there’s lot of positive things out there to look forward to.

More with Todd Fryhover on the 2011 apple crop tomorrow.

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