Cool growing season an added boost to Rice Fruit’s great stored apples this season
Cool growing season an added boost to Rice Fruit’s great stored apples this season
“For our company, stored apples are in very good condition at this time,” said John Rice, president of Rice Fruit Co. in Gardners, PA, in an interview with The Produce News Dec. 17. “We had the type of growing season that is conducive to good fruit condition and coloring, and the relatively cool growing season in August and September was an added boost.”
He noted that the only exception is some breakdown with the Honeycrisp, explaining that it is endemic to the variety. Learning how to store it has been a long and ongoing learning curve.
Demand for Rice Fruit Co.’s ‘Kiku’ club variety continues to grow. Gift boxes of the delightfully sweet and crunchy apple are available at ricefruit.com/kiku-apples.“We’ve been very busy with our export customers this year,” Rice added. “The turnover has been good and we have high quality to offer. Retail prices are a hindrance, however. They are down from both last year and the year before. Although it’s true that American consumers are buying more apples, money coming back to the industry is as much as five or 10 dollars a box lower.”
That difference, he pointed out, determines if growers make money or not.
The Red Delicious, which continues to be the most produced variety in the United States, and is still the number one selling apple, is wreaking the most price pressure trouble. The crop is fairly large nationwide, but the demand in the country continually diminishes as new varieties have come on board and garnered attention.
“The Gala has become the new Red Delicious in the U.S.,” said Rice. “Washington ships a lot of their Red Delicious to export markets, including Mexico, Canada, India and Southeast Asia,” he continued. “Pricing is a problem for growers there in this regard as well.”
Rice reiterated that pricing is the only problem the apple industry faces this year.
“Everything else is going well,” he said. “But we, and our growers, are unhappy with pricing. We have about 40 families bringing us apples to pack and market every year, and our responsibility is to keep them updated about market conditions. I send regular newsletters to them, and although it doesn’t help to increases prices, it does help to keep them informed so they can better plan for their futures.”