Good Demand For Stone Fruit

Good Demand For Stone Fruit

Good Demand For Stone Fruit

I'm Lacy Gray with Washington Ag Today.

The harvest of apricots in the state is pretty well wrapped up and attention is turning to the harvesting of peaches and nectarines. BJ Thurlby with the Washington State Fruit Commission says that so far demand has been good.

THURLBY: We're finishing up the back end of the apricot crop. It's been a nice crop, demand has been good and we've moved a lot of fruit this year. The exciting part is we're now rolling into the point of the summer where we are starting to harvest peaches and early nectarines. Traditionally this is right about the time when we really get going. We're a little earlier this year so there's more fruit coming off early, but we're still just kind of kicking off the Washington soft fruit season and we'll have fruit right on through till September.

Thurlby says retailers are eager to have the fruit.

THURLBY: It's exciting. I've had more retailers calling and asking "when is it going to be time for me to start getting some of this Washington soft fruit in", and I'm excited that that early demand appears to be out there - so that's good for the growers.

As far as how large Washington's total soft fruit crop will be Thurlby had this to say.

THURLBY: Well on soft fruit, when you look at the country in general, we're probably between the sixth and eighth biggest producer of soft fruit. And we're thinking right in the range of between apricots, peaches, nectarines, prunes and plums - close to 4-million boxes total.

How does that rank against other years?

THURLBY: Well in apricots, we're number two but in peaches and nectarines it puts us like I said in that sixth to eighth spot and it depends on how much fruit is harvested in Colorado and Michigan - those are the two states that we're closest to.

That's Washington Ag Today.

I'm Lacy Gray on the Ag Information Network.

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