U.S. Apple Sales
From the Ag Information Network, I’m Bob Larson. U.S. Apple sales saw some significant growth in November, part of that driven by exports, which were up dramatically … many of which were from here in Washington state that produces a vast majority if the nation’s export apples.
Chris Gerlach, Director of Insight and Analysis at USApple, says that’s always good news, but it did catch him a bit off guard …
GERLACH … “I went look around to make sure that I hadn’t missed a beat about, you know, the tariff negotiations and sort of trade negotiations to see if, you know, a Taiwan, a Vietnam, Thailand maybe secretly reduced their tariffs or we somehow got access to South Korea or Japan and I didn’t hear about it. But I didn’t find out anything about that.”
Gerlach believes November’s impressive growth was thanks to the strength of the U.S. dollar and probably some promotional pricing …
GERLACH … “I haven’t looked, had a chance to dive deep into the data in terms of pricing, but I suspect that a lot of those exports were sent, you know, market sort of entry, market share, or efforts to gain market share and get into some of these countries and, hopefully, reduce pressure here at home with potential oversupply.”
Gerlach says Honeycrisp numbers are up this year, along with the prices, following the 2024 season, which was a down year, so that certainly helped.
