Fruit left unharvested as big boom vanishes
US (NY): Apples are falling not far from tree

Chris Watt takes a drive along some of the back roads of Albion, past the orchards that this time of the year are usually picked clean.

This year, many of the trees are still holding fruit, and the grass under the trees is covered with apples. Most of the apple pickers have gone home, either to Mexico and Jamaica, and Watt said much of the crop will be left unharvested.

This year, with prices so low for processing fruit and the juice, Watt said it didn't make financial sense to pick all of the apples. Many of the farms just went after their finest fruit, not bothering to get apples for processing and juice.

Watt, an apple grower for 45 years, said growers are dealing with a dramatic drop in prices this year. Last fall was a boom time, with growers getting big prices for fresh market apples, and fruit for processing and juice.

"This is the biggest one-year swing I've ever seen," Watt said.

The price of fresh market apples, those sold in the produce section at the grocery store, dropped from 46.8 cents per pound last October to 26.1 cents this October, a 44-percent drop, according to National Agricultural Statistics Service. The processing price -- apples used for sauce and slices -- has plummeted from 12 to 18 cents a pound last fall to about a nickel a pound this year. The price for juice apples is down to 3 or 4 cents a pound, a price so low it doesn't cover growers' labor and transportation costs, Watt said.

"The juice market has vanished," said Peter Gregg, spokesman for New York Apple Association.

It is still a good year for growers with strong demand for fresh market apples, those that get the top dollars. Although the price is down, with more volume of apples, many growers are doing well with the fresh market, Gregg said.

He said prices have fallen because the market is flooded. He blamed the bumper crop in Michigan -- up from 14.3 million to 25.0 million bushels -- and another big crop in Washington for crowding the market.

Bruce Kirby of Albion had one of his biggest crops ever this year at his 42-acre apple farm. The ample rain and warm weather fueled fat fruit. He wished he could reverse the past two apple growing seasons. Last year, when prices were so high, his crop was decimated by hail. This year his orchards produced good-size fruit with few imperfections.

"Last fall the prices were through the roof," Kirby said Saturday at his farm along Densmore Road. "This year it's disappointing."

Kirby said the price situation isn't "calamitous." But growers would have liked to have been better rewarded for producing such high-quality apples. Growers also lost the processing market. Kirby said he actually did better last year, after his crop insurance kicked in, than he did this year with such a good crop of apples.

Kirby last fall he was paid 14 to 15 cents by processors for apples with nicks. This year the processing price was down to 8 or 9 cents. The juice price for apples on the ground, those that aren't rotten, was nearly cut in half from about 8 cents to 4.5 cents, Kirby said.

His farm produced about 42,000 bushels of apples, or about 1.7 million pounds. For every penny the price drops, Kirby sees about $17,000 less in revenue. He is one of the smaller apple farms in Orleans County. Some of his farming friends feel a $100,000-hit when the price drops a cent.

Lake Ridge Fruit on Ridge Road in Gaines packs about 1 million bushels of fruit for the fresh market. The company is a partnership of local growers. John Russell, Lake Ridge's general manager, said there has been a big appetite by buyers for apples, especially for Honeycrisp.

"We have sold more Honeycrisp than ever," he said Monday. "They're already gone."

But the big crop of fresh market apples gave buyers the option to pay less and be more choosey, Russell said. Last year, when hail hurt many orchards throughout the state, buyers were forced to buy early and pay high prices for fresh market apples, Russell said.

"This year it's basic supply and demand," he said. "But business is very good. Movement of apples has been very good. People are eating more apples."

There are so many fresh market apples that some of those premiere quality apples are going for processing, meaning a much lower price paid to growers, Kirby said.

The New York Apple Association continues to promote Honeycrisp and other emerging and popular varieties. Those apples offer the best return to growers, Gregg said.

But Watt would like to see more promotion of juice and applesauce, markets that are also important to growers.

With those markets mostly lost this year, Watt said many growers will struggle to break even. Yet, they are faced with the same operational costs. They can't afford to not prune and nurse their trees.

"You still need to take care of your orchard or else it will die," Watt said. "It can become diseased very quickly."



Source: thedailynewsonline.com

Publication date: 11/27/2009

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