More on Tree Fruit Association

More On New Tree Fruit Association. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Fruit Grower Report.

Jon DeVaney is the new president of the Washington State Tree Fruit Association which is a combination of four previous groups that had some overlapping areas. When it comes to state and federal issues, DeVaney says they may tackle it.

DEVANEY: That depends on whether it is really being brought up at the state level or the federal level. One of the organizations in the industry that we did not merge with is the Northwest Horticultural Council which represents the tree fruit industry in Oregon, Washington and Idaho on federal and international issues.

So something like a GMO issue in the tree fruit industry would be handled by the Hort Council and not the Tree Fruit Association.

DEVANEY: In the past there have been state level initiatives or proposed legislation that touch on the issues as well and when they’re state based then we do chime in on those issues.

But DeVaney says they will be keeping an eye on some of the upcoming issues,

DEVANEY: The industry is looking at finishing up harvest on a very large apple crop this year. When you have a big crop nationally there’s more price pressure and so most growers are even more sensitive - growers always watch the bottom line carefully but with a large crop they’re even more sensitive to what the costs of production are and a lot of those costs are government policy driven so there’s a lot of attention to proposals before the legislature that have been talked about that could have the potential to greatly increase production costs for tree fruit growers.

That’s today’s Fruit Grower Report. I’m Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.