CFAP Aid for Tree Fruit Pt 1

CFAP Aid for Tree Fruit Pt 1

Bob Larson
Bob Larson
With today’s Fruit Grower Report, I’m Bob Larson. Plenty of questions remain for our tree fruit growers when it comes to qualifications for monetary relief from the Coronavirus Food Assistance Program.

While some groups, like the potato growers, lost a lot of business when restaurants and schools closed, Northwest Horticultural Council president Mark Powers it wasn’t AS BAD for tree fruit …

POWERS … “Well, you know that’s a good question and I don’t have definitive statistics on how much is sold to what we would traditionally call, right, broadly speaking, I

think it’s probably 10% or less.”

But, after all of the initial hoarding and stockpiling,

Powers says retail sales have tailed off a bit …

POWERS … “And, what we’re also seeing is that, while there was an initial spike in retail interests, that has fallen off and not surprisingly. I think, I mean just looking at my own purchasing habits, we’re not going to the grocery store nearly as much as we used to. And so, if you run out of something, you kind of say, I ran out of it, I’m not going to go pick it up, necessarily.”

Bottom line, Powers says …

POWERS … “Sales seem to be maybe running a little bit behind normal. We certainly have got export demand falling off which is causing some problems. And product just isn’t, it’s moving slowly.”

But, Powers sale regardless of whether the impact was at the food service side or on the retail side, apples and pears aren’t moving through the system as quickly as we’d like.

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