Dec 2, 2011

Past is present

So, what’s the difference between the fruit industry now and the fruit industry 50 years ago?

Here’s a sample of what we’ve learned in the past year:

• Food safety barely existed in 1961, but today there are storage rooms so aseptic you could perform surgeries in them – and you still might not pass the audit.
• Direct marketing has helped former roadside stands evolve into large, diversified farm markets that contain bakeries, delis, cider rooms, gift shops, u-pick orchards, corn mazes, petting zoos … I could go on.
• Viruses, mites, loss of habitat and stressful cross-country journeys have weakened bee populations, weakening pollination prospects at the same time.
• Pest management is more complicated now. Instead of simply hammering pests with a broad-spectrum pesticide, growers today must use more selective tools.
• Fruit trees are smaller and closer together, making them easier to manage. (At some point, growers realized they were in the business of selling fruit, not wood.)
• In 1961, there were two wineries in Michigan. Today, there are more than 80. In 1962, California was growing 150 acres of Chardonnay grapes. Today, the state has more than 95,000 Chardonnay acres.
• In a 1989 survey, 7 percent of farm workers admitted they were in the United States illegally. By 1994, the proportion was 34 percent. In 2011, it could be as high as 75 percent. The labor situation is a mess – but you all know this story.
• In the 1970s, strawberry growers in California and Florida started using drip tape. More growers were seeing the benefits of precision irrigation.
• Gone are the days when every county had an Extension agent who would regularly visit neighboring farms. Decreased funding has consolidated such services, aided by new technologies that have made communication more efficient – and taken away the personal touch Extension used to have.
• The use of CA storage is common today. It wasn’t common 50 years ago.
• In the 1990s, mating disruption for codling moth control became a reality, and Washington state’s organic tree fruit industry exploded.
• U.S. fruit exports have grown, but not as fast as imports.
• Consumers, no longer satisfied with a choice between Red Delicious and Golden Delicious, have driven a proliferation of new apple varieties.

Is it just me, or is growing fruit harder now than it was half a century ago?

That thought jumped out at me when I was reviewing all the 50th anniversary stories Derrek Sigler and I have written in the past year for FGN. Even the positive items on the list – the success of direct marketing and growth of the wine industry – haven’t exactly made things simpler for you guys.

In the many conversations Derrek and I have had about putting together these 50th anniversary stories, one topic keeps coming up: How much we’ve both learned.

If you want to understand the present, study the past. That sounds cliché, but clichés tend to be true.

To read FGN’s final anniversary story, about Mechanization & Technology, click here.

By Matt Milkovich, Managing Editor