Fruit Year in Review Part 4

Fruit Year in Review Part 4. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Fruit Grower Report.

Today we continue our look back at the year and the stories affecting the northwest fruit industry. A late, long and cold spring once again affected the entire fruit industry driving harvest times at least 2 weeks later than usual. Gip Redman with the Oregon Cherry Growers talked about running behind.

REDMAN: Very much similar to last year starting off with being early by mid-February we were already early and by early into March we could see that we were actually farther ahead at that time than we were last year and last year was early. Then it turned off cool last year and ditto again this year. And we’re behind now.

Michelle Moyer, assistant professor with WSU-IAREC said grapes were affected as well.

MOYER: Now in terms of spring we’re probably not seeing as much damage in terms of the freeze and frost as say the cherries and other stone fruit crops that are already flowering right now. I know there’s a lot of grapevines in some areas that haven’t even broken bud yet. That’s also quite variable when they actually start to develop in the spring.

In 2011 a new organization took on the task of labor. Dan Fazio headed up the Washington Farm Labor Organization.

FAZIO: Basically, we took all of the labor and employment division from the Washington Farm Bureau and formed a new association and it serves all seasonal employers whether they are farmers that are members of the Farm Bureau, or the Hort or the Potato and Onion association or any other the other associations that have seasonal employers as members.

We’ll wrap it all up tomorrow.

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