Updating the Apple Harvest
Updating the Apple Harvest. I'm Greg Martin with today's Fruit Grower Report.
It has been a tough year for a lot of agriculture but one of the most anticipated crops is about to finish up. Todd Fryhover, President of the Washington Apple Commission talks about how the 2015 apple season is faring.
FRYHOVER: It's been a very interesting fall for us. Of course we had the heat in August and some of the fruit varieties that were harvested just after that heat like Gala's and Red Delicious did have some smaller fruit sizes. When the weather changed we really saw an improvement. The sizing continued to grow, we had a little bit better color and the optimism returned.
And with that optimism came some better quality fruit.
FRYHOVER: More and better Fuji's than what we thought. The Granny deal looks fantastic, it's got great finish. The Cripp's Pink that are starting to come off this week are looking real good. Size is fantastic so there's renewed optimism. It's definitely going to be a shorter crop than what we had last year but it still show be right around our third largest crop in history.
He says that exports look good.
FRYHOVER: There's a lot of interest in China which of course this is our first full season of full varietal access. We are having a little bit of pushback on the export deal for a couple reasons. Number one the value of the U.S. currency is of course very high. Weekend currencies in Europe are creating a lot of competition for us and then when you come out of a big crop and you have a small crop of course we're pushing prices up so consumers need to come to grips with that and that takes a little bit of time.
That's today's Fruit Grower Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network of the West.
