Apple Outlook

Apple Outlook. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Fruit Grower Report.

Yesterday we talked a lot about the hail storms recently and the damage done to the northwest apple crop. Todd Fryhover, Washington Apple Commission says they certainly started out with a very bright picture.

FRYHOVER: The 2012 growing season was perfect. We had a wonderful set during the spring time. The growing up until recently has been just perfect for a high quality apple crop but the recent storms that have come through have spread across the entire state and that of course affected everybody at different levels but have put us back into maybe a more realistic crop volume.

Early thoughts were this might be a massive crop in the 120 million boxes.

FRYHOVER: The crop estimate did come out on August 1st and essentially what it’s telling us is that it could be the second largest in history and that’s a wonderful thing especially when you keep in mind that New York and Michigan which are number 2 and 3 in production are substantially down in volume so the potential to move the crop domestically at profitable levels looks very promising.

As mentioned yesterday estimates of damage from the hail storms could be anywhere from 10 to 25%.

FRYHOVER: I think people are very comfortable with saying 10% of the crop volume has been hit by hail. The extent is the real key. Is it total damage, the fruit won’t be harvested or is it, it’s going to reduce my pack out.

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