Tree Fruit Crop Update

I 'm Susan Alle with Tuesday Tree Fruit Report. Cherry harvest is over for the most part throughout the Northwest so I thought it might be interesting to look forward and get some grower insight, into how other tree fruit crops are coming along. Here is Matt Rice with an update from CMI, Columbia Marketing International one of Washington States largest Growers Pacers and shippers of tree fruit who is also the sales and marketing company for 6 independently owned growing and packing entities;

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RICE: Pear crop is coming along very nice. Will have quite a few of the US1 this year which is good. Sizing appears to be a little bigger this year.

Apple crop is looking good as well. Color should be coming in nicely. Hard to say what the sizing will be like but it should be similar to last year if not a size or two larger. With the heat coming on over the next couple of weeks we may see the sizing on the apples slow down a bit as the trees do not like Hot Weather.

CMI finished up with our Apricots early last week, although there are some packers still going. And knock on wood the last of our arrivals were good. Quality overall was good this year but demand was a bit sluggish. The California crop overlapped with the Washington crop by a couple of weeks so that put some strain on movement early on. It would also appear that most Apricot packers were picking longer than their estimates putting more strain on movement. AD pricing was needed early and often to keep the crop moving.

And we've heard that Northwest pear crop is running a little earlier than last year and is expected to be 2% above last year.