Around US$100m-worth of Washington State-grown apples were destroyed as a result of industrial action at ports along the US West Coast, according to Todd Fryhover, president of the Washington Apple Commission.
Speaking to The Guardian, Fryhover said that the ports strikes hampered the industry’s ability to export large volumes of fruit over the early stages of this year, forcing growers to dump their fruit in their orchards. “If we wouldn’t have had the port slowdown, we wouldn’t have needed this,” he told The Guardian.
The industrial action officially concluded last weekend after a new contract was signed between port operators along the West Coast and the union representing dockworkers. Fryhover told The Guardian that exporters had lost three weeks of their season as a result of the strikes.
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