Apple Industry Update

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

Todd Fryhover with the Washington Apple Commission spent some time talking about last years apple crop.

FRYHOVER: As far as the Washington crop we grew 129.5 million bushels of fresh apples and that was up 20-million boxes from the previous record so it was a fantastic year in producing Washington apples.

A lot of those apples usually find their way into the export market but Fryhover says this year is a bit different.

FRYHOVER: In general, we ship about 33 to 34% of all of our fresh apples to international markets. However, this year is unique with the crop failures experienced in New York and Michigan, that number has actually gone down. This year we expected to export about 36-million but because our total crop number is nearing 130-million, the domestic market is going to capture probably somewhere between an additional 10 to 15-million packages compared to last year.

This was of course the year that the drought created a lot of problems for other states apple crops.

FRYHOVER: New York was down roughly 60%. Pennsylvania had a normal crop. Actually they picked out long much like we did here in the state of Washington and Michigan was just hammered. They basically had no crop.

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