Apples Moving Along

Apples Moving Along. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Fruit Grower Report.

We are into the thick of it when it comes to the apple harvest but this has been a bit of a strange year. Dan Kelly with the Growers Clearing House talks about the August estimate and some of the issues around it.

KELLY: 109-million box fresh crop which is pretty much similar to what we had the current season that we are finishing but we had a huge hailstorm come through July 20th. People were talking that our 109 crop was going to be more like 120 but with this hailstorm there’s anywhere between 10 and 20 million boxes worth of hail-grade hailed on fruit.

Kelly says a third of that hail damaged fruit will just hang on the trees unpicked.

KELLY: And then another third, some of that will be packed and some of it will be processed and then the other third, most of that will probably be packed. So we’re not really sure where that falls in line. Supposedly with the estimate the hail-grade fruit was included in what they expected to pack

Even with those elusive estimate numbers the Washington apple crop will be in high demand.

KELLY: Michigan, they normally have around 20-million and they’re going to have roughly 3-million. Of that most is going to be processing. New York has lost about half of their crop and they think they’re going to have about 15-million and they’re usually in the 25-28 range. Those guys are small potatoes compared to us and those are the two biggest guys.

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