10/17/06 What`s Next for Soft Fruit

What's next for soft fruit. I'm Greg Martin with today's Fruit Grower Report. Soft fruit harvest is just finishing up and should be mostly done by the end of this week according to BJ Thurlby, president of the Washington State Fruit Growers Commission. This year's crop has turned out to be a good one in spite of some weather related damage. THURLBY: The hail didn't seem to play out too much and have an effect on our soft fruit crop this year a little bit but just in pockets. But overall our crop size, our peaches and nectarines were good sized this year and the demand for them matched the great quality that we had. Looking forward to next years crop Thurlby expects the labor issue to be forefront. THURLBY: Right now in this industry for tree fruit labor is absolutely the number one thing on the top of everybody's mind. You just keep hearing about growers having to shift pickers from peaches into pears for a day or two to be able to make that work then back into soft fruit for a day or two then over into apples. Then they've got somebody doing some pruning here and there and there just doesn't seem to be enough bodies to go around so that is the big issue right now. There are other issues to be considered after the harvest is done. THURLBY: You know the other issues that I think were going to be spending a lot of time talking about this winter will be looking at our cherry programs and looking at opportunities for the future in this ever expanding cherry crop. I feel real strongly that we have a great future because we have an unbelievably great product. But we've got to figure out as an industry, how do we get the consumer excited about our product later in the season. That's today's Fruit Grower Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.