2A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 23, 2018
Small apple growers disappear as industry grows
Costs, labor,
regulations take
their toll
‘It’s been said that
yesterday’s 60-acre
grower is today’s 600-acre
grower and tomorrow’s
6,000-acre grower.’
By DAN WHEAT
Capital Press
GRANDVIEW, Wash. —
Concord grapes, part of his
family’s farm for 75 years,
grow on one side of his drive-
way, but on the other they’ve
been replaced with a year-old
planting of the new state apple,
Cosmic Crisp, which Frank
Lyall sees as an investment in
the future.
“The Concords go to
Welch’s. They’re hardly a high
value crop anymore. People are
taking them out,” says Lyall,
60, who farms in the Lower
Yakima Valley, where in 1915
his great grandfather began
with prunes, hay and cattle.
There was a time when the
Lyalls’ operation, which now
includes 450 acres near Grand-
view and Mattawa, would have
been considered large. Today,
it’s small, and like so many
other small growers in central
Washington, Lyall looks at the
mounting pressures that have
knocked some of them out of
business and wonders how long
they will survive.
There’s the shortage of
labor and its increasing cost.
The cost of mechanization. The
growth of government regula-
tions. Then there’s the cost of
replanting with new apple vari-
eties, usually around $30,000
per acre. Combined, they make
the viability of small-scale tree
fruit farms daunting.
Frank Lyall,
farmer in the Lower Yakima Valley
Frank Lyall
Like many growers, Frank Lyall is investing in the new
state apple, hoping for good returns.
to fruit from small independent
growers like himself, would
be just as happy if more small
growers disappeared.
Some people share that
view. Others dispute it.
“It’s been said that yester-
day’s 60-acre grower is today’s
600-acre grower and tomor-
row’s 6,000-acre grower,”
Lyall said.
Ever-thinning profit margins
contribute to 4.3 percent fewer
principal farm operators in the
U.S. between the last two U.S.
agricultural censuses of 2007
and 2012. The shrinkage was
greater for Washington apple
growers, whose ranks dropped
7 percent during that time.
“It’s remarkable to me how
many farmers have hundreds of
acres or smaller and are going
concerns but don’t seem to have
anyone in their families who
want to take over when they
retire,” he said. He doesn’t plan
to retire. His brother, Charles
Lyall, runs the farm in Mat-
tawa. His nephew, Jim Lyall,
works with him in Grandview.
Some 120 miles to the north
in East Wenatchee, Susan Droz
Rankin, 71, and her brother
Paul Marker, 68, sold their
small orchards, totaling about
16 acres, a few months ago
because they wanted to retire,
no one in their families wanted
to farm and regulations, costs
and a shortage of labor contin-
ued to erode profits.
Orchards shrink
The numbers are equally
daunting. In 1925, 46,240
Washington state farms grew
apples. By 2012, only 2,839
remained, according to the U.S.
Census of Agriculture.
Lyall, who is president
of the Yakima County Farm
Bureau, believes some of the
region’s large tree fruit com-
panies, which grow, pack and
sell their own fruit in addition
“In 2005, we had people
stopping in looking for work.
In recent years, no one has.
It’s been a real struggle to find
people, and we even increased
our wages to higher than H-2A
(foreign guestworker) piece
and hourly rates,” Rankin said.
Food safety paperwork is
“overwhelming” and mechani-
zation and variety replacement
is too costly, she said. New pes-
ticides that are softer on the
environment have to be applied
more often, adding more costs,
she said.
“Farming used to be a lot
of fun. The whole family got
out and worked from dawn to
dusk and enjoyed it, especially
at harvest,” Rankin said. “Now
all these issues have taken some
of the fun out of it.”
About 135 miles farther
north, near the U.S.-Canadian
border town of Oroville, Dave
Taber, owner-operator of 275
acres of tree fruit, said he has
been questioning his survival
for years, largely due to less
labor availability and higher
costs.
“Small growers have been
in decline in most commod-
ities. Lack of capital to mod-
ernize and the burden of reg-
ulations hits them hardest and
discourages their children from
taking over,” said Desmond
O’Rourke, a retired Washing-
ton State University agricul-
tural economist.
Pilot House Distilling fined for not verifying age
The Daily Astorian
Astoria’s Pilot House Dis-
tilling was fined by the Ore-
gon Liquor Control Commis-
sion for failing to verify the
age of a minor before allow-
ing them to buy or be served
an alcoholic beverage.
Pilot House will pay a
Feb. 22, 2018
JOHNSON, Marvin Leroy,
84, of Astoria, died in Wheeler.
Caldwell’s Luce-Layton Mor-
fine of $1,485 or serve a
nine-day liquor license sus-
pension. The distillery is
licensed to Lawrence Cary
and Todd Shelton.
SUNDAY
ALMANAC
Chilly with periods of
clouds and sunshine
Tillamook
39/45
Chilly with periods of rain
Last
Salem
35/49
Newport
38/46
Mar 9
Coos Bay
39/47
First
Mar 17
Source: Jim Todd, OMSI
TOMORROW'S TIDES
Astoria / Port Docks
Time
1:02 a.m.
2:47 p.m.
Low
3.2 ft.
0.8 ft.
Astoria, died in Astoria. Cald-
well’s Luce-Layton Mortuary
of Astoria is in charge of the
arrangements.
Baker
19/36
Evans, the executive chef at
Astoria Coffeehouse & Bis-
tro, was runner-up in the 2017
Readers’ Choice Best Chef
category. In Coast Weekend
on Thursday, The Mouth of
the Columbia — the food and
restaurant critic — incorrectly
wrote that none of the winners
were women.
Group omitted — The
Sunset Empire Transporta-
tion District voted to opt out
of a $1.4 billion timber law-
suit brought by Linn County
against the state. A story on 7A
Wednesday omitted the group.
Name misspelled — Law-
rence Cary runs Pilot House
Distilling in Astoria. His last
name was misspelled as Carry
in a 1A story on Feb. 14.
LOTTERIES
Ontario
24/41
Burns
18/32
Klamath Falls
19/37
Thursday’s Lucky Lines: 01-06-
11-14-20-24-25-29
Estimated jackpot: $37,000
OREGON
Thursday’s Pick 4:
1 p.m.: 4-7-1-5
4 p.m.: 2-9-9-1
7 p.m.: 7-9-3-7
10 p.m.: 6-2-6-6
Lakeview
14/33
Ashland
31/43
Affiliation incorrect —
Kirk Wintermute, an Astoria
attorney, is the president of the
local chapter of the National
Alliance on Mental Illness.
NAMI Oregon says Richard
Elfering, who wrote a guest
column that appeared on 4A
on Wednesday, is not formally
affiliated with the group.
Woman chef — Alec
MONDAY
Clatsop Care Health District Board, noon, 646 16th St.
Knappa School Board, 5:30 p.m., Knappa High School library, 41535 Old U.S. Highway 30.
REGIONAL CITIES
City
Baker City
Bend
Brookings
Eugene
Ilwaco
Klamath Falls
Medford
Newberg
Newport
North Bend
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Portland
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Seaside
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Vancouver
Yakima
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TOMORROW'S NATIONAL WEATHER
NATIONAL CITIES
Hi
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60
68
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76
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tuary of Astoria is in charge of
the arrangements.
Feb. 18, 2018
LUPER, Kathy I., 64, of
WASHINGTON
Thursday’s Daily Game:
1-5-0
Thursday’s Keno: 05-06-16-17-
19-20-21-23-28-29-33-38-42-
56-57-60-69-73-75-77
Thursday’s Match 4: 03-09-
10-18
Forecasts and graphics provided by AccuWeather, Inc. ©2018
Tonight's Sky: The First Quarter Moon (12:09 a.m.)
will be prominent in the evening sky, setting around
midnight.
Today
Lo
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Will small survive?
Will small apple growers
someday be gone and a few
large companies grow, pack
and sell all the fruit?
Lyall says it’s hard to know,
and that it depends on what
government and large buyers
want, since they created the
current economic model.
Michael Butler, CEO of
Cascadia Capital, a Seattle
investment bank, believes most
small growers will eventually
die out and six to eight large
companies will remain. A few
small growers will survive if
they have a niche product and
link up with a large company
that can distribute their fruit, he
said.
The best model, he said, is
the large company growing,
packing and selling mostly its
own fruit with the remainder
from small growers.
“We find a lot of mid-sized
companies filling 30 percent
of their volume with their own
fruit and 70 percent with fruit
of small growers. These com-
panies are in the danger zone,”
Butler said.
PUBLIC MEETINGS
La Grande
24/35
Roseburg
35/47
Brookings
38/48
Mar 24
John Day
25/34
Bend
26/37
Medford
30/45
UNDER THE SKY
High
8.8 ft.
6.6 ft.
Prineville
25/39
Lebanon
36/47
Eugene
34/47
New
Pendleton
28/38
The Dalles
29/45
Portland
36/48
Sunset tonight ........................... 5:53 p.m.
Sunrise Saturday ........................ 7:04 a.m.
Moonrise today ......................... 11:27 a.m.
Moonset today ............................ 1:31 a.m.
City
Atlanta
Boston
Chicago
Denver
Des Moines
Detroit
El Paso
Fairbanks
Honolulu
Indianapolis
Kansas City
Las Vegas
Los Angeles
Memphis
Miami
Nashville
New Orleans
New York
Oklahoma City
Philadelphia
St. Louis
Salt Lake City
San Francisco
Seattle
Washington, DC
Breezy and chilly with
rain
47
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Shown is tomorrow's weather. Temperatures are tonight's lows and tomorrow's highs.
ASTORIA
37/48
SUN AND MOON
Time
7:14 a.m.
9:14 p.m.
TUESDAY
46
36
REGIONAL WEATHER
Precipitation
Thursday .......................................... 0.00"
Month to date ................................... 4.70"
Normal month to date ....................... 5.68"
Year to date .................................... 16.06"
Normal year to date ........................ 15.88"
Mar 1
45
33
A bit of snow and rain in
the a.m.; cloudy
Astoria through Thursday.
Temperatures
High/low ....................................... 42°/27°
Normal high/low ........................... 52°/37°
Record high ............................ 67° in 1908
Record low ............................. 27° in 2018
Full
MONDAY
48
39
Cloudy with a bit of snow
and rain
A different era
“It used to be a farm fam-
ily was a basic unit of labor or
production in a tree fruit opera-
tion. A man and wife and kids
could run 30 to 60 acres and do
most of the work themselves,
hire help at harvest and make a
living. It’s become increasingly
difficult to do that,” Lyall said.
“Towns, once prosperous
middle class communities on
tree fruit, are now less than that.
They’re reliant on government
assistance programs. There’s
a general decline in the social
health of communities as we see
more crime and social dysfunc-
tion. That’s been the tragedy of
the whole thing,” he said.
The shift has impacted
whole communities, he said.
“It use to be Wenatchee
was the Apple Capital of the
World and was a very attractive
small city on the banks of the
Columbia, a desirable place to
live,” Lyall said. “I would say
the apple capital now is Mat-
tawa, but no one wants to move
to Mattawa. It’s a town signifi-
cantly below average income
and socioeconomic levels.”
Consolidation of retailers
has forced the consolidation of
the tree fruit industry and the
new model is about a dozen
large companies controlling
around 80 percent of produc-
tion and sales. Large compa-
nies are better equipped to deal
with labor, mechanization and
replanting costs and govern-
ment regulations, but “it’s com-
ing at a large socio-economic
CORRECTIONS
SATURDAY
37
Apple history
A closer look at Census of
Agriculture numbers shows
27,150 Washington state farms
producing apples in 1910,
increasing to 35,535 in 1920
and 46,240 in 1925. The Great
Depression hit them hard, and
many growers went bankrupt.
Federal loans eventually helped
save the industry.
USDA also recommended
the formation of the Washing-
ton Growers Clearing House
Association, which started in
Wenatchee in 1941 and tracked
fruit prices, which helped
growers and packers determine
prices.
But the biggest drop was
from 35,571 farms in 1950 to
10,318 just four years later.
“The U.S. economy was
booming after World War II. It
was the only world economic
power. A lot of people got out of
farming, not just apples, but all
farming, to make more money
in the cities. It was a huge soci-
etal shift,” O’Rourke said.
The 1989 Alar scare —
a suspicion that the pre-har-
vest growth regulator caused
cancer — crashed apple sales
and prices and caused another
multi-year decline in the ranks
of growers. So did poor returns
in the late 1990s.
“I don’t think small grow-
ers ever recovered from the
Alar panic. That really shifted
the economic model. It ended
the industry dominance of the
small family farmer and the
co-op (grower-owned pack-
ing cooperative) model,” Lyall
said.
DEATHS
FIVE-DAY FORECAST FOR ASTORIA
TONIGHT
“There are specialized
niches where small growers
can shine if they can get the
capital. They can’t make it on
low-priced mainstream variet-
ies,” he said.
cost to the farming commu-
nities of Central Washington
and it’s a subject no one wants
to touch with a 10-foot pole,”
Lyall said.
Regulations have always
been the bane of small grow-
ers because they take the focus
away from growing fruit and
reduce nimbleness, he said.
Larger retailers favor food
safety regulations but aren’t
willing to pass increased costs
on to consumers, he said.
He credits President Donald
Trump with rolling back regu-
lations that, he says, grew the
most under presidents Barack
Obama and George W. Bush.
It’s also ironic that big com-
panies complain about outside
investors driving up land prices
even as they partner with them
to buy more land and plant
more trees to have enough fruit
volume for new packing lines,
making land unaffordable,
causing overproduction and
consolidation, he said.
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Shown are noon positions of weather systems and precipitation. Temperature bands are highs for the day.
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Weather (W): s-sunny, pc-partly cloudy, c-cloudy,
sh-showers, t-thunderstorms, r-rain, sf-snow fl urries,
sn-snow, i-ice.
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