August tracker: Stocks tighten, Honeycrisp holdings surge

Just as high school, college and professional football training camps kick off in August each summer, the month also represents the start of apple harvest for many parts of the country.

That makes the US Apple Apple Tracker monthly report for August one growers and processor should pay special attention to.

One aspect of this month’s report, released on August 11, is that for the second consecutive month Michigan apple holding and production data have been omitted from the USDA’s dataset.   The state’s last holdings information, submitted in June 2026, saw the state holding 1.3 million bushels.

For the rest of the country, the survey shows the total number of apples in storage as of August 1 totaled up to 23 million bushels, which US Apple vp of insights and analytics Chris Gerlach writes is 7% less than August 2025’s 25 million bushel level.

Here are 5 key takeaways from parsing the data in the report:

1. Honeycrisp takes the spotlight: The uber-popular but often tricky to grow variety entered the month with 2.72 million bushels in storage, which is more than double last year’s August total of 1.24 million bushels in storage. Fresh holdings are up, too, from 811,000 last year to 1.28 million today.
2. Cosmic Crisp, Granny Smith post gains: Domestic holdings of Cosmic Crisp jumped to 4.90 million bushels, which makes it the largest variety in storage currently. Granny Smith also saw a marked increase to 3.19 million. On the opposite side of the coin, Red Delicious (2.68 million) and Pink Lady (1.97 million) are both down for the month.
3. Fresh market lower than last year: Entering August 2025, total fresh apple holdings sat at 18.2 million, whereas today that same segment comes in at 15.8 million. That means the industry overall has less 2025-crop to work through as harvest kicks into full gear.
4. Processing segment still strong: the number of apples in the procession market (sauces, juice, and concentrates) hit 7.2 million bushels, an 11% rise from 2025 data. Processing activity overall was flat for the month, so the market is in a significantly different spot than the fresh market.  
5.  Washington State soldiers on: the market pace-setter currently accounts for 20.17 million of the total 22.96 million bushels of apples in total holding and 14.83 million of the 15.81 million in fresh holdings. It will be interesting to see what, if any, effect the tragic wildfire situation in Eastern Washington will have on the state’s production in the months ahead. For the second month in a row, East Coast leaders New York and Pennsylvania, which had their own weather issues this spring, both increased their holdings totals significantly.

You can review the full US Apple report here for more context and data.