Economic Impact of the Tree Fruit Industry

Economic Impact of the Tree Fruit Industry. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Fruit Grower Report.

We all know that the tree fruit industry has a major impact on the economy of the state. But how much? Dr. Patrick Jones from Eastern Washington University at the recent Hort Convention spent some time talking about that.

JONES: Probably a lot of you have heard about these studies that economists do and I’m an economist. We use something called input-output models. It’s really not that much of a black box. It’s trying to determine the relationship between industries that actually buy and sell to each other.

Jones says there are various ways of measuring economic activity.

JONES: Whether it’s apples, whether it’s fruit, whether it’s my old business in retail and I just want to say there’s five here. We’re looking at income, employment which you see a lot of emphasis on jobs and public policy, output and finally there’s two things I’m going to dwell on from our work and number one is taxes. I think it’s of some interest to you to be able to explain to your elected officials the taxes you generate through your industry through these total production effects. And finally something called value added.

Jones explains the idea of value added.

JONES: Value added is a bit like the first item which is income but it also includes things like profits which is prepared as income in many cases, imputed rents or outright rents and indirect taxes.

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