Apple Marketing

You wouldn't think it would be all that hard to sell an apple. But there are challenges when it comes to making sure the entire crop gets sold whether domestically or into the export market. Bruce Grim, executive director for the Washington State Horticultural Association says with a larger national crop this year there will be some additional challenges.

GRIM: Obviously every marketing organization will pursue a strategy that they feel best maximizes returns for their growers depending on what their crop mix is in their particular group of warehouses. But I think yes, the larger crops in the east will be a concern. The Michigan situation is probably a concern just by virtue of how incredibly far up they are in total crop compared to last year.

There are a number of factors for the Michigan producers that will help determine how marketers proceed here in Washington.

GRIM: We want to get our crop picked with optimal conditions and I think we have done that so far even with the week of relatively hot weather here a couple of weeks ago that probably kept color from being as good as it could have been on Gala but that's changed since then. I think our goal and objective as an industry should be to get this crop picked with optimum storage conditions and look at the back part of the market as being where our strength will come. We'll face less competition on the other end of the market than we do on the front end.

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