Jan 14, 2009
Not Many Have Been Able To Grow Them

When Anthony Owens started on the path to growing apples organically, he was part of a group of growers who decided to collaborate and take a shot at it.

Now, eight years later, he has about a hundred acres under the organic regimen, but he’s the only one of the group who’s still doing it.

“In the Southeast, I’m it,” he said. “I’m not bragging. That’s just a fact.”

Along the entire East Coast, the number of commercial-size organic apple growers can probably be numbered on one hand. There are about 1,000 acres of organic fruit in the eastern United States.

Marvin Owings, the Extension fruit educator in North Carolina’s Henderson County, said Owens in the largest producer of organic apples on the entire East Coast.

Owens makes no bones about it. If you want to grow apples organically, it’s best to choose the nice desert environment in Washington state. Doing it on the East Coast, where diseases and insects flourish, is much more difficult. And the further south you go – adding more heat, higher humidity and a longer season to the equation – the more difficult it becomes.

By the time you get to Hendersonville, N.C., where Windy Ridge Organics is located, the challenges have weeded out everybody but Owens.

What keeps him going is strong consumer demand. A lot of people want locally grown, organic fruit and are willing to pay more for it. Owens doesn’t store apples. He sells out as he harvests – in fact, before he harvests. Whole Foods is his biggest customer, but at Earth Fare he’s the “poster child.” His photo – the one with this story – poster size, graces the produce section. His apples, bearing the Windy Ridge Organics name, appear in stores “from Vermont to Miami,” he said.

Since he started growing apples using organic practices in 2000 (his first certified organic acreage came in 2003), Owens has determined his cost of production is $18 to $19 a box, compared to about $8.50 for conventionally grown apples. He has to make two to three times as many spray applications as conventional growers because the spray materials wash off easily, do not have residual activity, don’t have curative powers (most are preventative) or are just not as active. He’d love to be able to use a material like Guthion, where one spray application kills moth adults, larvae and eggs and lasts 20 days. He has to spray every five to seven days.

“You don’t take summer vacations in this business,” he said.

“On the East Coast, it takes so much more organic spray chemicals than on the West Coast; it drives the cost through the roof. I tell people that the East has about eight diseases and eight insects that Washington state just doesn’t have to deal with.”

In addition to about 100 acres and 18 varieties of apples, he grows watermelons, tomatoes and other vegetables organically.

“It’s by far easier to grow vegetables organically than it is apples,” he said. “To grow organic fruit, you need to be a scientist and a farmer.”

Organics is a curious mixture. As Owings, the Extension educator, put it, “for some people, organics is almost a religion. Most people think organic production doesn’t use chemicals. Most people don’t realize that you’re spraying three times as much.”

He gives huge credit to Owens for being able to find and harness the science that allowed him to grow apples organically.

“It is not impossible to grow apples organically in the eastern United States,” Owings said. “It is possible. Anthony has proved that, and the proof is in the sales. He produces good-looking fruit, fruit he can be proud of.”

Organic growers can’t use spray materials that are “synthetic” – made in an organic chemistry lab – and thus are limited in some ways to centuries-old inorganic materials like copper, sulfur and lime. But science and technology have made some inroads in areas where prediction and control of animal behavior are important and where new “natural” products that meet organic standards have been discovered.

Disease control

For disease control, for example, Owens’ big problems are apple scab, sooty blotch, fly speck and white rot. Most of them develop in synchrony with environmental conditions – appearing after so many growing degree days or so many hours of leaf wetness. He knows, for example, that sooty blotch will develop to problem proportions after 260 leaf wetness hours.

He has monitors in the orchard and computers with models of insect and disease development that tell him when he needs to implement controls.

For apple scab, it is important to be on it early in the spring, he said, so he uses sprays containing copper and oil while trees are still at the dormant stage. He uses copper sprays in the fall as well, on the leaves before they fall or even after they’re on the ground, to lower the amount of inoculum that overwinters in the orchards.

Summer scab control relies on sulfur and some clever, modern materials that pass the organic test of being “natural.”

Serenade and Sonata are now widely used – not just by organic farmers – for control of foliar diseases like scab and powdery mildew. They are made from naturally occurring soil bacteria: Bacillus subtilis and Basillus pumilis, respectively. These bacteria produce antibiotics that suppress other microorganisms, either killing them or reducing their growth rate.

Since none of the materials he can use in organic production have curative powers over these diseases, the strategy is to keep the foliage and fruit covered with materials that prevent their development. That means spraying every five to seven days and figuring that rain resets the clock. When it stops raining, he sprays right away.

“If I can see the problem, it’s too late,” he said.

For most of these diseases, the resulting damage is usually more cosmetic than physical. But the organic label doesn’t result in a high level of “forgiveness” by consumers.

“Sooty blotch will turn apples black,” he said. “It doesn’t hurt the fruit and can be washed off, but consumers will not accept it. Fruit has to be flawless.”

Flawless fruit
That was one of Owings’ discoveries. Back in 2000, Owings enticed Owens and four other growers into a project he called the “North Carolina Organic vs. Conventional On-Farm Research Project.” It was funded by a grant from the Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SARE) branch of USDA, and Owings did it as part of his thesis for a master’s degree.

About that time, the Appalachian Sustainable Agriculture Project (ASAP) was starting, funded by groups like the W.K. Kellogg Foundation – which was sponsoring what it called Integrated Farming Systems across the country – and by government agencies such as SARE. The core mission was to find ways to revitalize farming in areas where agriculture was fading. Farmers in Appalachia were losing tobacco as a source of cash. ASAP and others believed that organic production and local production could win consumer support for regional agriculture.

Studies show consumers are interested but not forgiving.

“The quality level required is the same: U.S. Extra Fancy,” Owings said.

“To get that level of quality, the cost, year in and year out, is about three times the cost of conventional spray programs.”

Consumers have been willing to pay that.

“Anthony is getting prices that cover the cost,” Owings said. “So it proved to be sustainable.”

Owens gives credit to ASAP for its enthusiastic support of his work. It has made him somewhat of a local celebrity. But that is also one of the project goals: “to put a face on the food.” The project covers “southern Appalachia,” defined as eight counties in Georgia, six in South Carolina, six in Virginia, 13 in Tennessee and 23 in western North Carolina, where the headquarters is located in Asheville.

Jane McLarney, the publicity coordinator for ASAP, said the project is oriented toward improving economic opportunities for small farmers, especially through marketing, by raising consumer awareness of local foods and who produces them. Owens is truly a “poster child” for that.

The size of his operation, its success and the fact it is organic make it a good symbol, McLarney said.

Insect control
In the realm of insects, Owens needs to keep ahead of codling moth, oriental fruit moth, apple maggot and, to a lesser extent, plum curculio. As with diseases, modern science has delivered important tools.

Chief among them are pheromone mating disruptors, the natural hormones that, when dispensed in an orchard, hide females in a cloud of perfume so confused males can’t find them.

Other new products have also passed the “natural” test.

Entrust is an important product for controlling moths and the larvae they produce that attack fruit. Entrust is a fermentation product produced by a soil bacteria harnessed in a vat. It is cleared for organic use, not only on apples but many vegetables as well.

Another spray product Owens uses is the pyrethrum Pyganic, a botanical insecticide approved for organic use and made from chrysanthemums.

One nice thing about organic pest control materials is they often have broad use in a range of crops.

“I use the same materials in vegetables that I use on apples,” Owens said.

He rated his worm control as “94 percent effective.” Very few apples contain live worms, he said. A few will show small scars, evidence of an attempted entry by a newly hatched larvae.

Another product, a kind of clay (kaolin) called Surround, is used both for insect control and to protect apples from heat and intense sunlight. At 2,500 feet up in the Appalachian Mountains, the apples sometimes need protection from sun scald. His apples color well, he said, probably because of the elevation – and applying the white film doesn’t seem to reduce coloring. Surround also is used to reduce the ability of insects, like plum curculio, to find the apples.

Other practices
Owens has not had experience with some aspects of organic production. His orchards were established before they were organic. The trees are large and freestanding, about 15 feet tall on M.7 rootstock. They are vigorous trees that don’t demand much fertility.

The rainfall is high, so no irrigation is used. Trees are able to compete with other vegetation, so the lack of good organic herbicides hasn’t been a problem. The orchards have grass floors, and vegetation under the trees is controlled by workers using hand-operated line trimmers.

Most of his apples are Red Delicious, Yellow Delicious, Gala and Rome. Rome has been successful as a fresh-market apple, he said.

“When they are 100 percent red and tree-ripened, they are sweet and good. We sell a lot of Romes as fresh fruit.”

Owens sells fresh-market apples in tray packs, which are packed on the farm. Apples that don’t meet this first level of quality go for peeling, slicing or pressing into juice. He’s developed a good market for organic apple cider. Processors like Mott’s and Beechnut also buy his organic apples. There is a large market for organic baby food.

With generally high demand, he’s had no problem selling all the apples he can produce.

That’s been a great thing about working with organic apples, according to Marvin Owings.

“The shoe has been on the other foot,” he said. “Demand has been high and supply is low, so growers can get the price they need to cover their costs.”

But, he added, “It takes a special kind of grower who is willing to be out there every day; scouting, being proactive, staying ahead of problems.”




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