Growers and food groups overcoming an apple oversupply – Good Fruit Grower

—story and images by Connor Gibbons, for Good Fruit GrowerOrr’s Farm Market opened a year-round storefront in 2024 in Kearneysville, West Virginia, along with its on-farm market, to lean into recent market gross sales in response to a struggling processing market. (Connor Gibbons/For the Good Fruit Grower)With apple season at its peak throughout West Virginia and the mid-Atlantic area, the apple trade faces uncertainty round a second season with a surplus of processed apple stock. “From what we’re understanding, (processors) are in the identical state of affairs as they had been final yr; they’re going to be taking much less quantity,” mentioned Don Dove, basic supervisor of manufacturing and gross sales at Orr’s Farm Market in Berkeley County, West Virginia. “Anytime that the processing market is down, it additionally impacts the wholesale market as a result of the ground actually lowers and the pricing, after all, lowers.”Final yr, a rescue effort in West Virginia noticed the federal government buying roughly $10 million value of apples from orchards after which distributing the fruit to individuals going through meals insecurity. The processing-market downside of excessive stock and low costs persists in 2024.That worrisome pattern led Dove and Katy Orr-Dove, his spouse and enterprise companion, to lean into the recent market facet of their enterprise, opening a brand new, everlasting farm market in Kearneysville this spring, along with their main on-farm location in Martinsburg. “Our farm market is about 50 % of our enterprise; it’s actually rising. So, the native prospects actually assist us,” Orr-Dove mentioned. “The retail facet of issues undoubtedly provides us safety the place now we have some range that different individuals don’t have on their farms. In the event that they’re simply rising for processing, they’re having extra bother than we’re.” The Orr household orchard presently operates on 550 acres within the area recognized regionally as Apple Pie Ridge, which stretches throughout Berkeley County in West Virginia and Fredrick County in Virginia. West Virginia expects to reap 1.8 million bushels of apples this yr, and Virginia expects 4.8 million bushels, in accordance with the U.S. Apple Affiliation’s estimate.Orr’s Farm Market produces roughly 275,000 bushels of apples and 60,000 bushels of peaches per yr. The farm has been in Orr-Dove’s household since 1954, when the area targeted totally on processing fruit. At present, the household is exploring methods that contain changing processing blocks with varieties extra appropriate and desired for recent consumption as they give the impression of being, long run, on the worth traits and worldwide competitors within the processing market.Orr-Dove mentioned she’s hopeful that the neighborhood continues to see supporting native farms as a matter of satisfaction and patriotism.“It comes all the way down to meals safety,” she mentioned. “If locations like this begin going out of enterprise … that farm property might be developed into one thing else. It’s not going to be low-cost to purchase the property again and switch it again right into a farm. It could be cheaper to guard what you have already got.” Katy Orr-Dove and Don Dove of Orr’s Farm Market sit amongst their apple timber in spring 2024. The farm on West Virginia’s Apple Pie Ridge was initially bought by Orr-Dove’s grandfather in 1954 when the area targeted solely on the processing market. Now, the house owners and lots of others within the area are determining methods to adapt to a declining processing market. (Connor Gibbons/for Good Fruit Grower)A rescue repeat? Final yr’s reduction effort was pushed by West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin and introduced collectively assets from the U.S. Division of Agriculture and West Virginia Division of Agriculture to assist pay for the seasonal labor to reap the fruit, in accordance with Aime Minor, the West Virginia Division of Agriculture’s assistant commissioner.In late August, as Good Fruit Grower went to press, Manchin’s workplace introduced $3.1 million in reallocated USDA funding to help West Virginia’s apple growers going through ongoing oversupply.“This essential funding will be sure that this yr’s surplus of apples might be managed successfully, keep away from meals waste and assist maintain the livelihoods of West Virginia farmers,” Manchin mentioned in an announcement. “I need to thank Secretary Vilsack and the USDA for serving to to offer essential reduction to West Virginia farmers and their households.”Previous to that announcement, Minor mentioned that if funding was accessible, the state was able to execute a reduction purchase. “I’m totally assured that, if we get these funds, we will transfer the apples rapidly once more,” she mentioned. A big portion of distribution within the 2023 rescue was taken on by the Farmlink Venture, a nonprofit group targeted on the struggle towards meals insecurity nationwide. Mike Meyer, Farmlink’s head of farmer advocacy, mentioned apple manufacturing doesn’t appear to be reducing within the state any time quickly. “I’ve had some apple farmers in West Virginia inform me that the apple stock is the biggest they’ve seen of their lifetime,” Meyer mentioned.One stipulation within the 2023 program directed that the apples bought with authorities funds had been to be donated to different organizations. As soon as the fruit was harvested, the issue of distributing thousands and thousands of kilos of apples from West Virginia adopted. In response to Meyer, in 2023, Farmlink distributed 13,461,269 kilos of recent apples throughout 364 shipments to over 100 different hunger-relief organizations, meals banks and pantries all through the U.S. The apples had been sourced from 11 orchards all through the state, together with 75,000 bushels from Orr’s farm. “The important thing takeaway from that is that it’s extremely doable — {that a} collaboration of the USDA, a state division of agriculture, a bunch of orchards and a hunger-fighting charity can pull this off,” Meyer mentioned. Connor Gibbons graduated from the College of West Virginia in 2024 with a level in journalism. He began this reporting in school and completed it for the Good Fruit Grower viewers. 



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