06/13/06 Common Sense Orchard Decisions

Common Sense Orchard Decisions. I'm Greg Martin with today's Fruit Grower Report. Getting the maximum return for your fruit crop takes a hard look at a lot of things. Noel Adkins is a fruit grower with Dovex Orchards says you really need to focus on dollars per acre. ADKINS: I'm going to suggest to you that your goal needs to be oriented around the highest return per acre to your farm, not necessarily the highest return per bin for a given variety even though that number is really important because you'll use it in a calculation all the time and that is dollars per bin times bins per acre in production equals dollars per acre and you need top be focused on this dollars per acre always. Adkins explains how you achieve that goal. ADKINS: You need to start with visiting your warehouse manager. Find out what they can market profitably to you and I'm talking about all the way back to the acre, not just the average of what that variety might return or what the average of all your varieties collectively on your farm but you need to make sure that it goes category by category right back down to the acre. You may find that your warehouse is very heavily into the Wal-Mart target slot-sized grade deal, but if you know that, you can grow to that market. If that's economically important to you and it'll give you the best return back per acre then you need to focus on that and its helpful to know that ahead of time. That's today's Fruit Grower Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.