01/30/07 Automating Cherries (Part 3)

Automating Cherries (Part 3). I'm Greg Martin with today's Fruit Grower Report. Working towards the goal of automating the harvesting of cherries or any fruit will have long term implications, especially on the labor issue. WSU's Dr. Matthew Whiting says that even if some of the immigration issues are resolved, acreage increases will keep the pressure on and still be insufficient. WHITING: There's one thing I think everyone can agree on and that's that it's not going to in any way improve our situation. Especially if you look at the increase in acreage of sweet cherries over the last  even the last 5 years but we've basically doubled and more than doubled our acreage in 10 years and there's no signs of that yet really slowing down so for the next several years we're just going to have a lot more cherry trees that need to be picked and best case scenario is we keep the crew that we have already and we know that will be insufficient. The mechanical picker has been developed but now the problems are geared towards the orchards design. The ideal orchard would have angled walls of fruit and Whiting says some producers are already moving in that direction while others may have to do some major work. WHITING: I mean there's some two and three year old orchards that I have visited where people are in a position where they can readily adapt what they had done in the first few years to fit with a mechanical harvest system and create those angled walls of fruit but the simplest way of course to do it is to design that from the ground up with that kind of harvest system in mind. And there are growers in our state who are doing that. That's today's Fruit Grower Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.