Gene Kupferman on...

Postharvest Postulations

The apple growers and the elephant

Numerous times over the last few years I have been struck by the dramatic differences in the way people view the world around them. Just recently, I was reminded of this fact when my teenage daughter and I compared notes on how we each view the world.

Along the line of the tree fruit industry--Can the marketer view fruit quality in the same light as the grower? Can the regulator, charged with protecting public health, view postharvest chemicals in the same light as the packer? Does the public deserve to be protected from all risks--from hot coffee to E. coli?

Let us explore the concept that the fruit industry is like an elephant and that we each see it in a different light.

1) Let us start at the rear end of the elephant. Any biologically functioning organism takes in sustenance and gives off metabolic by-products. Waste water is the outflow of any packing process. The packer must get rid of this water laden with chemicals, and the regulators, in this case the Washington Department of Ecology (DOE), must play out their role in protecting the groundwater, streams, and rivers of our beautiful state. Two opposing points of view about how to deal with this problem can be taken by the packer and the regulator, or we can agree that we have common interests in keeping the industry viable and protecting the environment.

A few years ago, a packer in Michigan disposed of waste water laden with DPA (diphenylamine) into a stream the same day a high school biology class went on a field trip to study the biology of the same stream. The discovery of fish floating belly-up made for great field trip reports by the students and a full-scale investigation by the Michigan equivalent of the Department of Ecology. There was no excuse for this incident (accident?). Washington's lakes and streams and the remaining fish population are our heritage and our calling card. We all would agree that they must be protected; yet at the same time, DOE needs to learn to work with packers to develop safe methods of disposal of waste water.

2) At the other end of the beast is the elephant's trunk. The elephant uses its trunk to smell the breeze, pick up his food and place it in his mouth, and shower himself. He never washes it, and he hardly ever has a stomach ache. In fruit industry terms, why should fruit packers be concerned with improving sanitary conditions in the packing house when there is no proof that anyone was ever made sick by eating an apple?

There are many reasons to improve sanitary conditions. Even from the standpoint of the fruit, it is a good idea. I have seen packing houses that are so dirty that I would not eat an apple off the line, or pick anything up off the floor. I am sure that if a packing house was kept as clean as a kitchen, there would be less fruit decay.

The apple business is a foodservice business. How often is the floor cleaned? And most importantly, how often are the brushes and hard surfaces of the line cleaned? When was the last time the rafters of the packing room were cleaned? Why shouldn't there be soap in the bathroom and the employees required to wash their hands?

If this were the focus of impending regulations from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, they would have my support and I imagine the support of most reasonable people in the industry. At this writing, the new regulations have yet to be implemented. My hope is that they will be reasonable.

3) What about the eyes of the elephant? I understand that the elephant can't see very well. The old saying is that quality is in the eyes of the beholder. I suggest that this is similar to the storage operator who needs to fill CA rooms with fruit of any type to keep the banker from the door. Bin in-charges (storage charges) are no different whether the fruit contains 95% packable fruit or 50% packable fruit. The charge is the same and this becomes a profit center for the packer. Many growers have not used clear thinking to determine what fruit should be put into the bin. In the past, middle-grade fruit made money, but no longer. It is now only the top-grade fruit that will be profitable. I believe growers must learn to sort in the orchard and store only fruit of optimum quality and maturity.

4) Let's consider the tusks of the elephant. According to current elephant market indicators, the tusk is the most profitable part of the animal. Why? Because supply is limited and the ivory is reputed to have mysterious powers. Just like our apples before we became a global community. Look at the returns of the Fuji growers five years ago. Look at Red Delicious returns 15 years ago--we couldn't do anything wrong! There was a place in the market for all but the worst apples. Now, the high jump bar has been raised. The apples that were considered top of the line premium just a few years ago are now third grade and lower--in part, because there is much more fruit and many more providers.

Increasingly, freshly harvested fruit from the Southern Hemisphere will be marketed against Washington's stored fruit. In spite of this fact, Washington growers are planning to produce even more fruit with no regard to the promotion of orderly marketing. This is especially true with Galas. We all admit that it is a variety with short storage life. It concerns me that we will not be able to profitably market this cultivar in the volume being planted. Yet the industry has recently turned down a request to have a tree census to find out where we are. Ignorance is bliss, I guess.

5) What about the size of the elephant? Is our industry bloated with orchard blocks that are unproductive? Do we need to slim down in order to provide the consumer with the product they demand? Who is the consumer of our products--the middleman buyer or the person who eats our produce?

What about reducing cost and improving consumption through alternative packaging? Modified atmosphere packaging has allowed the cherry industry to provide consumers in foreign ports with a lower cost product. Would it work for apples? How about pears? Why are we not preconditioning more loads of pears?

In another vein, why did Washington wait so very long to develop a tree fruit breeding program to provide information about new varieties before people plant them? Why isn't the industry organized enough to have research on cultivars that growers plan to grow before they become problems? Maybe then we would know when to harvest, how to store and handle new varieties such as Braeburn, Fuji, Golden Supreme, without so many problems. We need to deal with the harsh realities of increasing world production in an honest and cooperative manner.

6) What about the inside of the elephant? If you looked at the inside of an elephant, I'll bet you would see a brown mass of tissue. Well, the apple industry has had problems with internal browning of Fuji and Braeburn over the last few years. We have proven that it sure can slow sales. New information indicates that DPA may help reduce internal browning of apples in storage. This information came from Michigan State University via New Zealand and New York. It is being tested in small trials this year. Communication between industries and researchers should be open and free.

Finally, what about the elephant hunters? Will it be the salmon, the encroaching housing developments, the labor situation, the competition, or the lack of chemicals that make fruit growers a vanishing species? It will take a grower with lots of smarts (and good fortune) to survive. Maybe if we work together, more of us will prosper.

In my opinion, the industry should launch a review of where we are and where we are headed as an industry. In my experience, the fruit industry has not done this in a serious manner. It is only by knowing what we want our future to hold that we can evaluate our success. Just like the story of the apple growers and the elephant, your point of view depends on what part of the elephant you are seeing (grower, packer, marketer, etc.).

I often describe our industry as "capitalistic anarchy." Are we individual growers and individual packers, or are we part of a cohesive whole?

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