FirstFruits
NEWS
March 2015 Issue
"A
Quality Fruit Company Committed To Bearing Fruit...Fruit That Will Last" (John 15:16)
Challenges for 2015
The 2014
harvest has brought First Fruits Marketing (your sales group) another
interesting season. Each season is different, bringing unique
opportunities and challenges. The summer weather was almost too good and, based
off the last 5 years of solid sales pricing, the 4,000 growers in Washington
State have continued to plant more acres of apples as well as to replant
orchards from free standing trees to trellised trees. Trellised orchards
can now produce more than 80 bins per acre compared with the old standard of
about 40 bins per acre.
With all
of these new and updated plantings, Washington State harvested by far the
largest crop ever! Blessed by good exports and the focus on nutrition in
the US, the State has been able to effectively sell 120 million boxes of apples
each of the last 5 years-sell well and deliver great pricing back to the farmer,
who has to invest all the money up front before the apples are even there to
harvest and sell.
This
year, Washington State harvested 155 million boxes of apples (and usually grows
about 70% of all apples in the nation). Selling this volume of fresh apples
is a huge task. Because of the volume and the competition, the price of a
box of apples falls significantly----and because apples are "cheap"
fewer customers will buy lower grade apples.
So with the big crop, times are good for employees in the
fields, packing houses and sales office, but very difficult for the
farmer. A couple of other things are also hindering sales. First, you
have read about the Port strikes. Each week, Washington State sells about
500,000 boxes of apples outside our country to nations across the Pacific
Ocean. If we can't get them there, those sales don't happen and the extra
fruit adds to inventory here. Second, so much of our fruit this year is
very large in size; there are not enough buyers to take that fruit and the prices
drop even more. Because there are so many apples and so much
competition, it is difficult to set and hold a price for apples. Our
competitors in the valley are working daily to take customers away from us.
Pray with
us for success in selling our apples. We have a long way to go and the new crop
is only six months away!
No comments:
Post a Comment