05/18/07 What Price Apples?

What Price Apples? I'm Greg Martin with today's Fruit Grower Report. We've been hearing that apple producers can expect better prices for a box of apples, but how good? Dan Kelly with the Washington Growers Clearing House tells us. KELLY: Basically we've got a good season of prices primarily due to good quality, good movement, we have the dollar on the foreign markets is low so the export market has been good even though that our prices have been higher. The volume has been about the same as last year with better prices, but according to Kelly, the farmers aren't making a lot more. KELLY: The reality is the growers are not making record profits because the prices haven't kept up with all the costs, inflation. Especially right now the fuel costs which relates to a lot of other products, not just gas & diesel. But what will that higher price do to the price consumers pay at the grocery store? KELLY: Well the record prices are FOB prices that ship from the warehouse; it hasn't had a huge effect on the retail market price. They base their price on a lot of other factors. The actual FOB price is only one factor in that, they have transportation costs, they have warehousing costs, they have store costs of labor of putting it on display and so the increase in the FOB doesn't necessarily mean an automatic increase in price at the retail shelf. That's today's Fruit Grower Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.