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.
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