It should be a good summer for produce truckers who haul fruit out of the Northwest.
Cherry shipments are underway, while most other stone fruit crops will begin in mid-July, picking up speed as the calendar switches to August, and then going strong until the end of the month, with the late fruit still shipping out in early September. Northwest stone fruit shipments to Canada have been showing significant increases in recent years.
A little over one-third of American households purchase peaches, five times more than buy kale. Kale, of course, is the hot, trendy vegetable in America these days.
Apricot production ramped up in early June and was expected to continue through the month. Apricots are expected to be similar in size to last year’s large 7,500 ton crop. Organic apricots are making their mark. It may only be 2 percent of the U.S. category, but it’s growing at three times the rate of conventional.
Pear Shipments
The 2015 fresh pear shipments are forecast at nearly 20.4 million box equivalents, which equates to approximately 451,000 tons of fresh pears. The projection is 2 percent higher than the five-year average, and 2 percent lower than last year’s crop. The estimate was collected from fresh pear growers in Wenatchee and Yakima, WA, and Mid-Columbia and Medford, OR, growing districts.
Northwest pear shipments start in late July with Starkrimson, followed by the Bartlett harvest in early August. Anjou, Red Anjou, Bosc, Comice, Concorde, Forelle and Seckel will be picked from late August through September.
Apples, pears and cherries – grossing about $7300 to Orlando.