Wrapping Up the Soft Fruit Year

Wrapping Up the Soft Fruit Year

Wrapping Up the Soft Fruit Year. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Fruit Grower Report.

Cherries, pears, peaches, nectarines and apricots have all been picked and the industry is taking a quick breather even though BJ Thurlby, President of the Washington State Fruit Commission, says it will be a very quick breath.

THURLBY: You know we spend this time of year doing a lot of different things. We’re working on processed pears, we’re working on a lot of analysis looking at the 18 countries we’re selling cherries in to and just trying to get a feel for what went right, what went wrong, where are we going to have to retool for next year

While it was not a record season for stone fruit, it wasn’t a bad one.

THURLBY: At this point in the season we’ve finished shipping our last peaches and nectarines, really in the middle of October this year so now we’re kind of putting the finishing touches on our programs and we have really nice ad and merchandising support throughout the United States and Canada. I’m actually just finalizing some program promotional allowances and sending them over to Taiwan and Hong Kong.

Of course the big event coming up is the annual Hort Convention that begins on Monday in Yakima.

THURLBY: We’re all geared up for those. The theme is succession planning but we’re going to be there talking about stone fruit and I know there’ll be lots of talks about apples and pears. Obviously the key issue in our industry remains labor and it’s not going away and we’re sure hoping that we’re going to see some changes in terms of how our Representatives in Congress and the Senate are going to address that issue.

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

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