Apple crop marketers optimistic about 2015

QUINCY — For apple growers, 2015 should be better than 2014. That’s the conclusion of apple marketers as the 2015 harvest season begins winding down.

“You can smell the apples in the air,” said Karen Lewis, tree fruit production regional specialist for WSU-Grant/Adams County Extension.

The August projection for the 2015 crop was 124.2 million boxes, Lewis said. That’s about 20 million boxes smaller than 2014’s record crop, “and everywhere we’re hearing that the crop is picking out short (of estimates),” said Steve Lutz, vice-president of marketing for CMI, Wenatchee. The company sells fruit for a number of Grant County growers.

Warm weather in the early spring accelerated the bloom season, and meant apples are maturing about a week to 10 days earlier than normal, Lewis said. That’s good news for people with late-maturing varieties, she said, since it reduces the chance of frost damage.

The downside is that fruit size was affected by cool weather in the spring and a prolonged hot spell in midsummer. “The size has shifted down this year,” Lutz said. “We’re struggling for size.” On the upside, “we’re feeling very good about the quality of the fruit,” he said. “The eating quality is very good.”

“The diversity of apples on the market right now is really quite remarkable,” Lewis said. Washington production used to be dominated by what she called “the stoplight. We grew Grannies, Reds and Goldens,” in Grant County as elsewhere, she said. That refers to Granny Smith, Red Delicious and Golden Delicious. But other varieties are taking over a lot of those acres — Gala and Fuji apples came into the market in the late 1980s, and they’ve been joined by varieties ranging from Ambrosia to Cripp’s Pink (Pink Lady), Jazz and Tango.

One variety is dominating new plantings, she said. In orchards all over the state, it’s “Honeycrisp, Honeycrisp, Honeycrisp,” Lewis said. “It’s not a grower-friendly apple,” Fryhover said, difficult to grow and to store. But “consumers really seem to be enjoying it,” he said.

The 2014 crop entered the market just as union representing workers at West Coast ports, and the port operators, were negotiating for a new contract. Workers engaged in a slowdown from November through early February; the slowdown seriously impacted the export market, said Todd Fryhover, president of the Washington Apple Commission.

It had negative impacts on the domestic market too, Lutz said, as apples that would have been sold for export had to be redirected to domestic sales. That meant a lot of apples on a market already absorbing a record crop, he said. “That impact reverberates across every single box of fruit,” Lutz said.

The record crop and slow export market meant there could’ve been a lot of apples left as the 2015 crop was harvested, but most varieties didn’t have much carryover, if any, Lutz said, at least at CMI. Red Delicious was one exception, with 2014 Reds still being sold in late September.

Wildfires in Wenatchee and Chelan got close to those towns, so close they burned fruit processing facilities for Stemilt, Blue Bird and Chelan Fruit. That could’ve forced more fruit onto the fresh market, with a negative impact on prices.