08/18/06 Apple Industry Looks Ahead

Apple Industry Looks Ahead. I'm Greg Martin with today's Fruit Grower Report. Bringing the apple crop in has long been a Washington tradition. As the acreage increases and labor gets tighter, how are farmers going to continue to meet the needs of the industry? West Mathison, President of Stemilt Growers takes the challenges with optimism. MATHISON: My grandfather will remind me that they had a meeting a number of years ago about how they were going to pick and sell the crop; this was the apple crop and it was going to be 36 million boxes of apples and they didn't have the foggiest idea of how they were going to do it. And through ingenuity and innovation and advances in technology, we are now doing 90-92 million boxes of apples. And so I think you can look at this equation two ways as being a huge challenge or just another opportunity that as an industry we're going to have to overcome. At a recent conference, Mathison compared a bag of apples to a set of brakes. MATHISON: What I was pointing out was you have these different handling problems that go through the process and then if the fruit isn't just absolute rock solid and it's got this wonderful dessert eating experience, the whole eating experience that the consumer has will be negative. But then if we're not putting product out there that is just top quality, it really hurts everyone in the end. That's today's Fruit Grower Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.