Better year in 2024 for apples, cherries — not so much for pears
Vendors talk to tree fruit growers at the annual meeting of the Washington State Tree Fruit Association Tuesday in Yakima. The meeting ends today; look for coverage in the December Basin Business Journal.
CHERYL SCHWEIZER/COLUMBIA BASIN HERALD
YAKIMA — After two years of bumpy weather and bumpy harvests, the 2024 apple and cherry harvests were closer to average. Pear growers were not so lucky.
With harvest 2024 in the books, Washington State Tree Fruit Association President Jon DeVaney said cherry growers saw much better-growing conditions and much better yield as a result.
“This year’s cherry harvest was a welcome relief for our growers,” DeVaney said in a WSTFA press release. “While the harvest was good, it did not completely make up for losses in the previous two years.”
The Washington cherry harvest 2024 was about 12% larger than harvest 2023. The 2023 crop was so bad the USDA made Washington and California cherry growers eligible for disaster relief. Bad timing in the weather compressed the harvest and damaged the market as a result.
Wednesday is the last day of the 2024 WSTFA annual convention in Yakima; the theme for this year is “Navigating Adversity.” Bad timing hit pear growers hard – a January freeze reduced the pear crop by about one-third, the press release said.
Apple harvest was closer to historic averages in 2024, with about 124 million 40-pound boxes produced. Cold and wet weather in spring 2022 resulted in a small crop, about 103.9 million boxes. That set up a bumper crop in 2023, about 136.1 million boxes. A crop closer to historic averages will produce better returns for growers – but DeVaney said in an interview Tuesday, not good enough to keep up with rising operating costs.
Costs for fuel, labor, chemicals, supplies all rose faster than the return paid to growers, DeVaney said. But a full year of sales to India, an important export market that had been shut off by tariffs, was a boost to apple sales, the press release said.
Production of organic apples increased, as did the production of new varieties. Gala is still the most popular apple grown in Washington. Granny Smith, Red Delicious, Honeycrisp and Fuji rounded out the top five varieties.