Merging Into The Fast Lane

Merging Into The Fast Lane. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Fruit Grower Report.

Jon DeVaney, President of the Washington State Tree Fruit Association opened this years’ annual meeting with a talk on how the first year of the new tree fruit organization merger has been shaping up.

DeVANEY: It has been a very fast year. Just to recap again, the merger of the first of the three, four organizations took place on September 1st. That is when the Washington State Tree Fruit Association officially came into being but we didn’t complete the merger until January 1st of this year, 2015 when The Washington State Horticultural Association merged into complete that process.

DeVaney talked about what the focus has been during this first year as a combined organization.

DeVANEY: has been on maintaining the existing services that the four predecessor organization had ben delivering to you. Behind the scenes, of course, our staff were working on a lot of housekeeping measures like final tax returns for four different organizations, getting all the data transferred from four different servers on to one.

He talks about their mission.

DeVANEY: The Washington State Tree Fruit Association is to focus on adding value for you in the areas of educational programs like this annual meeting and other special trainings and events. Providing you with statistics so you can make informed decisions with your business and also working to advocate on your behalf with the media, especially the state and local government where you’re dealing with a lot of uncertainties these days driven by government policies.

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