It’s been another weird year for weather in the western US. Freezes in February, record cold in April and May, and rains in June were all part of the menu Mother Nature served up from Arizona to the Canadian border this year.
These meteorological gyrations have had a particular impact on the tree fruit industry in California and the Pacific Northwest – so much so that in the weeks leading up to the new season, few were willing to predict just what kind of production they would have to harvest.
Californian cherries are done for the year, but growers are still waiting to see where volumes for later-season products will land.
Californian stonefruit
California peaches, plums and nectarines have struggled somewhat this season under cooler growing conditions and intermittent rains. General industry agreement puts the crop at similar levels to last season’s 52m cartons, although with the California Tree Fruit Agreement voted out of existence between seasons, there is no longer an industry entity to conduct pack-out estimates and observers are left with their own educated guesses.
“The stone fruit crop this year is approximately the same on the trees as last year,” said Vince Balakian of Fruit Patch Sales. “The crop is late, like everything else this year, but fruit sizing appears to be pretty normal. Packouts could be reduced, however, due to the June rains – especially for exports.”
Mr Balakian said that, due to the delayed timing of the crop, the California stonefruit industry largely missed the Dragon Boat Festival in Taiwan this year, and may have a similar problem with the Ghost Festival.
“However, there could be an unusually good opportunity for supplying the Moon Festival for all varieties of stonefruit, as the deal should be peaking during the shipping period,” he said.
Northwest cherries
Moving up the latitudinal ladder, there have probably been more questions regarding production for the 2011 Northwest cherry season than any other tree fruit deal this year.
Once again, quirky spring weather combined with a hard freeze last November had industry experts second-guessing themselves on the packed volume for the new season. The Northwest Cherry Growers (NWCG) organisation finally went out on a limb in early May, estimating 17.2m cartons (9.1kg) in shipments for the 2011 season.
“We’ve backed off a little from that initial estimate,” said NWCG president BJ Thurlby. “We’re thinking more like 16m `cartons`, which would be the second-largest packed volume in industry history if that turns out to be the case. There’s a long way to go and a lot can happen with the weather, yet.”
Randy Eckert of Yakima Fruit agreed it was turning out to be a very nice crop. “Fruit quality and size have been excellent overall and the industry is oversold. Personally, I don’t think we’ll hit the original estimate of 17m cartons; this feels more like a 14m to 15m carton deal.”
According to the NWCG, as of mid-July, 55 per cent of the 2011 Northwest cherry crop had packed out to 10.5 row or larger.
Northwest stonefruit
Washington’s late stonefruit crop is expected to be down somewhat this year due to the November 2010 freeze and inclement spring weather.
According to Mr Thurlby, Washington exports the majority of its fruit to Canada, but some varieties of peaches and nectarines are increasingly showing up in Asia.
“Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore are the main destinations for Washington tree fruit,” said Mr Thurlby. “The crop is running late, like everything else, so we should see volume increasing for peaches and nectarines around the third week in August, continuing on through September.”
The full version of this story will appear in the July/August issue of Asiafruit Magazine.
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