Fruit Industry Outlook

It's been a pretty wild ride so for during the 2015 tree fruit season. An early spring, threats of frost, the port slow down all have had producers on the edge of their seats. Jon Devaney, president of the Washington State Tree Fruit Association.

DEVANEY: Obviously the early spring has gotten cherries ahead. Apples and pears have enough distance still to go but it's hard to say for certain they will stay as far ahead as everything is now. If summer cools off you could get back to a more normal anticipated harvest date but so far things have stayed ahead so it's looking as though everything will be a little bit earlier this year.

Another concern is of course water.

DEVANEY: What we'll be looking at for water supply in many irrigation districts over the summer with such a low snow pack and many junior districts being told there going to get under 50%, and still constantly being revised, of their anticipated water supply. If you have water shut off for a couple of weeks you can have issues with having adequate water for cooling for example.

We are seeing the port issue slowly fade into the mist.

DEVANEY: Most of our folks are looking at Seattle and Tacoma and they're largely caught up and back to normal. The real issue with the ports and getting back to normal is there was loss of market share when we were having inability to deliver to customers in the time frame they expected during the port slowdown.

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