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October 14, 2016 CapitalPress.com 5 Larger Washington apple crop may weigh on prices Capital Press WENATCHEE, Wash. — The 2016 Washington fresh apple crop is coming in larger than expected, and coupled with large crops elsewhere it will likely make for a challeng- ing marketing season, industry experts say. Whether prices tumble as much as they did with the re- cord 143 million-box crop in 2014 is an open question, but experts say they very likely will come down. The industry’s Oct. 1 esti- mate of the Gala, Honeycrisp and Golden Delicious crop is up 6.4 percent from the Aug. 1 estimate. Gala is now pegged at 32.5 million boxes. Hon- eycrisp is at 9.8 million and Goldens are at 8.3 million. If next month shows a sim- ilar increase in the Red Deli- cious, Fuji and Granny Smith varieties, the total crop could end up close to the 2014 re- cord, said Desmond O’Rourke, a consultant and retired Wash- ington State University agri- culture economics professor in Pullman. The Aug. 1 estimate was 132.9 million, 40-pound boxes. The crop could hit 138 mil- lion boxes, up 20 percent from the 2015 crop. It will depend on the size of the Red Deli- cious crop, other main variet- ies and the increasing number of club and managed varieties, said Chuck Zeutenhorst, gen- eral manager of First Fruits Marketing of Washington in Yakima. The Red Delicious crop was estimated at 33.7 million boxes in August. Its harvest is just wrapping up. “We don’t have a good han- dle on who is taking Reds out (and replacing them with other varieties) but I have a feeling Reds will be up and drive crop size higher,” Zeutenhorst said. The total crop, which is about 70 percent harvested, is “exceptional quality,” he said. Fuji, Cripps Pink and Gran- ny Smith remain to be picked. Freezing temperatures were forecast in northcentral Wash- ington for the night of Oct. 11. Too much freezing could less- en the crop volume. Another crop around the 140 million-box mark “would be challenging for a number of reasons,” O’Rourke said. In North America, it will compete with large crops in Michigan, New York, Canada and Mexico. In Asia and the Middle East it will compete with large crops from Europe and China, he said. The continuing strong Oregon approaching a ‘Golden Age’ of wine, beer, spirits, cider industries By ERIC MORTENSON Capital Press Two Pacifi c Northwest winemakers won awards in recent weeks, and the Oregon producer involved believes the state’s surging wine in- dustry has the potential to “lift the tide” for many other agricultural products. Ed King, CEO and co-founder of King Estate in Eugene, said the future will fi nd Oregon “fully arrived as a wine region standing on an equal footing with the world’s greatest.” King’s 2015 Acrobat Pi- not gris was named best buy of 2016 by Wine Enthusiast, an infl uential industry maga- zine. The designation goes to wines considered an extraor- dinary value. Acrobat sells for about $13 a bottle. The Best Buy of the Year award was a fi rst in that cat- egory for an Oregon wine. In 2014, Ken Wright’s 2012 Abbott Claim Vineyard Pi- not noir, from the Willamette Valley’s Yamhill-Carlton dis- trict, was ranked fi rst in Wine Enthusiast’s Top 100 wines. In an interview, King said he views the award as a parallel development to news that a large California company, Jackson Family Wines, maker of the familiar Kendall-Jackson brand, has purchased its fourth Oregon property in three years. King said the popularity of Oregon wines is a sign of its “arrival” in the wine world, and the interest of “very sophisticated” compa- nies such as Jackson Family Wines is further evidence. He said the current evolu- tion and success of the state’s wine, beer, hard cider and spirits sectors may one day be looked upon as a “Golden Age” of Oregon agriculture. King shared an email he distributed to wine industry leaders this summer in which he predicted Oregon will be dollar diminishes the buying power of countries with weak- er currencies, and the Russian embargo remains, he said. On Oct. 7, the average ask- ing price among Yakima and Wenatchee district shippers for extra fancy (standard grade), medium size (80s to 88s) Red Delicious was $24 to $26 per box, according to USDA. Oth- er prices were: • Golden Delicious: $28 to $30.90 for 80s and $26 to $28.90 for 88s. • Gala: $20 to $23.90 for 80s and 88s. • Fuji: $30 to $32.90 for 80s and 88s. • Granny Smith: $22 to $26.90 for 80s and 88s. • Honeycrisp was $45 to $60.90 for 80s and 88s. Those prices are strong and comparable to last year at this time but don’t mean much be- cause annual return depends on prices during the bulk of sales from November through June, O’Rourke said. “As the pipeline and storage becomes full those prices will come down for sure,” he said. In early August, O’Rourke predicted the average price of Gala for the 2016-2017 sales season will be $21 per box, down from $24 last season, and $21 for Fuji, down from $27. Judge rejects Idaho anti-grazing arguments Lawsuit pertains to 220,000 publicly owned acres Area in detail By MATEUSZ PERKOWSKI Capital Press Courtesy of King Estate Ed King, CEO and co-founder of King Estate winery and vineyard in Eugene, Ore., said Oregon’s craft drink industry is entering a “Golden Age.” “much more heavily planted” to winegrapes in the future, and that the Southern Oregon and Columbia River wine regions will “share in this growth and renown” with the Willamette Valley. He said the wine industry will become the largest com- ponent of Oregon agriculture in terms of dollar value, and will be “politically power- ful.” Winegrapes ranked ninth in value among Oregon com- modities in 2015, at $147 million. They were ranked 11th, at $107 million, in 2013. King said Oregon wine must defi ne itself as part of the state’s “global brand,” which will include fi ne craft beverages, great food and an “unspoiled environment” to attract culinary travelers. King also said the state can have world-scale export brands “built around our spectacular Oregon products: wine, beer, cheese, fruits, berries, hops, nuts, meats and grains.” He warned that Oregon wine must retain the diverse operations and high quality that got it to this point. “Do not allow a creeping sameness under any guise (to) overtake our diversity,” he wrote his fellow vintners. “We must compete with each other with ferocity, and yet it is also our duty to seek the survival of our littlest, most unorthodox wineries.” He said Oregon’s wine- makers “must stay close to our dirt and our yeast, mak- ing our wine with the idea that we, ourselves, and our friends and families will be drinking it in ten and twenty years. We can do this and still be a business.” The other recent wine prize went to the Walla Wal- la Valley’s L’Ecole N° 41 winery, of Lowden, Wash., which won a trophy for Best Red Bordeau Blend in the Six Nations Wine Challenge held in Australia. An environmentalist group has failed to persuade a fed- eral judge that sheep grazing on about 220,000 publicly owned acres in Idaho violates environmental law. Chief U.S. Magistrate Judge Ronald Bush has re- jected several arguments by the Western Watersheds Proj- ect that federal land managers insuffi ciently studied the im- pact of grazing on sage grouse habitat. In 2013, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management decid- ed to alter grazing on the Big Desert Sheep Allotment near Blackfoot, Idaho, by con- structing roughly 17 miles of fencing and watering facilities to create a “forage reserve.” The purpose of the forage reserve is to increase sage- brush cover while providing livestock feed for ranchers who must rest their allot- ments due to revegetation and wildfi re recovery efforts else- where. Western Watersheds Proj- ect fi led a lawsuit last year claiming the plan violated the National Environmental Pol- icy Act because BLM didn’t take a “hard look” at the envi- ronmental consequences and didn’t study enough alterna- tives to the project. “Despite its own fi ndings that wildfi res had resulted in conditions that prevented the allotment from meeting land health standards for native plants and sagebrush obligate species, BLM did not study the relationship between graz- ing and the reduction of soil crusts and cheatgrass inva- sion, which are well known to increase fi re frequency and size,” the complaint said. The Idaho Wool Growers Association, the Minidoka 20 NATIONAL MONUMENT AND PRESERVE 15 24 Pocatello R American Falls . By DAN WHEAT Rupert S n ake Big Desert Sheep Allotment N 20 miles 84 Idaho Utah Capital Press graphic Grazing Association and the Etcheverry Sheep Co. inter- vened as defendants in the lawsuit, which sought an in- junction against construction of the forage reserve. Bush agreed with the in- tervenors and BLM that the environmental group failed to show livestock grazing actu- ally caused the wildfi res that have degraded range condi- tions in the allotment. “No one appears to ques- tion that livestock grazing practices can impact fi re fre- quency and intensity. But, there is no evidence that the historical grazing activity on the allotment has done so,” he said. The judge also rejected the argument that BLM’s study of impacts on the sage grouse was too narrow, noting that the agency’s decision re- lied on analysis of more than 600,000 acres in and around the allotment. “In short, the BLM went beyond generalized state- ments about possible effects, taking the necessary ‘hard look’ at the grazing permits’ cumulative impacts upon sage-grouse populations on the allotment itself, as well as neighboring allotments,” he said. 42-1/#14
