Soft Fruit Update

Soft Fruit Update. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Fruit Grower Report.

Cherry season is coming to a close and BJ Thurlby with the Washington State Fruit Commission updates us.

THURLBY: The cherry season is just finishing up north. We have another - I’m thinking another 7-8 days of harvest to go. We’re going to finish at about 23 million boxes which the previous record was just over 20-million so we saw a record crop this year.

There were a lot of challenges this year with the cherry crop and who knows what that final number would have been without the weather issues. But up next are the other soft fruits.

THURLBY: It’s been a great apricot year. We’ve packed just over 53-hundred tons which is over half a million boxes. The apricot market for the most part has been strong all the way through. There was a real kind of kickoff early and demand was strong all the way through for the first part of the crop and really overall it has finished very well so from the standpoint of apricots we’ve had a very good year.

Thurlby talks about the other soft fruits being harvested.

THURLBY: And we’re coming into a market nationally that California has had some severe weather damage on their crop this year. The southern crops are finished. The northern crops were very short and are done and so we’re looking at an open slate kind of as far as where the market is. It’s always a battle because we are a smaller state in terms of production of soft fruit but overall I think this year is going to be a very good year just because the market appears to be open nationally and in Canada.

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