Apple Harvest Coming Along

Yesterday we talked with the Executive Director of the Washington State Horticultural Association, Bruce Grimm about how the 2013 apple harvest is going. Gala's, some Golden's, Granny's and early Fuji's are being picked.

GRIMM: It's probably just too soon to make any pronouncements as to how those will pick out. The packouts have been very good we're understanding and all-in-all the redistribution of the crop east to west, unlike last year there certainly will be more price competition in the east than what we saw last year but I think things are starting out pretty satisfactorily from a marketing standpoint.

Regardless, marketers would always like to see better movement of products.

GRIMM: We're about to that point in the season where a lot of retailers begin to reset their displays and start featuring apples and the more fall types of fruits, pears included so we'll see a change here in a week - ten days and how the market is reacting to our new crop.

Last years apple crops in Michigan and New York were pretty much non-existent.

GRIMM: We think certainly the crops in New York and Michigan will be near-record if not record crops for them. And it all is a function of how much goes to the processing side, how much goes to fresh market. So we think with the short crops last year there's probably going to be pretty strong demand on the processing side which should help. We think they had rains at pretty much the optimal time for them so they should have some decent fruit size to deal with

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