It's not often that hundreds of Washington’s orchard owners, farm managers and fruit industry leaders spend much of their annual conference discussing how to grow and harvest fewer crops.
But with oversupply hurting the economic outlook for most apple, cherry and pear farmers, the need to reduce annual crop yields to improve prices took center stage on the opening day of the Washington State Tree Fruit Association’s annual meeting in Wenatchee.
More than a dozen leaders of the apple, cherry and pear industries spoke Monday and said that while Central and Eastern Washington have ideal growing conditions, experienced workers and state-of-the-art packing facilities, the tree fruit industry must be smarter about how it manages its growth.
“In Washington state we do have a bright future in tree fruit,” said West Mathison, CEO and president of Wenatchee-based Stemilt Fruit. “It really comes down to a supply problem, and a supply problem is a management problem.”
Jose Ramirez, an organic apple, pear and cherry grower near Royal City, said growers need to be more strategic.
“We have too much right now, so (orchards) need to cut what doesn’t make you money,” he said. “We have too many varieties ... you can go around the orchards and you see a lot of (unpicked) fruit.”
Association President Jon DeVaney opened Monday’s discussion session by reviewing government policies and programs. Some have helped growers, such as the federal Department of Labor’s recent changes to H-2A wages and allowances for worker housing costs.
"I think all of us were in such shock ... we'd seen the AEWR (Adverse Effect Wage Rate) go up for so many years," DeVaney said. The H-2A changes "are things we had addressed as problems for decades."
But state lawmakers’ looming budget woes, along with environmental and labor proposals for the 2026 session, could throw some more financial obstacles at Washington farmers, DeVaney said.
“How do we make sure that as the state fixes its own fiscal problems, it doesn’t pull resources away from an industry that’s already losing money?” he asked several hundred attendees at the Wenatchee Convention Center.
His answer was increased vigilance and involvement in the lobbying efforts, including attending Tree Fruit Day on Jan. 28 in Olympia.
Targeting top apple varieties
Most of Monday afternoon’s general session in Wenatchee dealt with “Surviving the Shakeout: Washington’s Fruit Industry at the Crossroads,” the title of a presentation by Stemilt’s Mathison and Welcome Sauer, a retired tree fruit industry executive.
The afternoon also included a panel discussion of crop management, labor and vendor/warehouse alignment. The panelists were Royal City area grower Ramirez and two Yakima Valley fruit industry representatives, Gilbert Plath and Adam Zediker.
Much of the discussion centered on growing the right varieties of apple and which ones are popular with domestic and foreign consumers, especially the two biggest export markets for apples, Mexico and Canada.
The most exportable apple varieties are Fuji, Golden Delicious and Red Delicious, Mathison said, and that trio's percentage of the Washington apple crop has fallen from roughly 50% in 2014 to just under 30% a decade later.
Taking their place are newer varieties that are more popular with domestic consumers: Honeycrisp, Cosmic Crisp and Pink Lady.
Gala remains the No. 1 apple variety at 18% of production, the WTSFA reported in its 2025 crop prediction, followed by Honeycrisp at 15%. The latter moved ahead of both Granny Smith (14.7%) and Red Delicious (12%) for the first time.
Mathison believes growers have shifted too hard into newer varieties, many of which are more expensive to produce. He said most new varieties have a break-even wholesale price of $35 per box, and the trio of varieties most demanded by export markets are "value prices" around $25 per box.
While the popularity of Cosmic Crisp and Honeycrisp varieties continues to grow, Mathison said Pink Lady apples will soon be among the top five varieties grown in the U.S.
"I still believe it has a better future than Fuji and Gala," he said of Pink Lady apples.
Another advantage of that variety, along with Cosmic Crisps and Granny Smiths, is that Washington state is one of the only areas that grow them.
"Michigan and New York grow really nice Honeycrisp, Gala and Fuji (varieties)," Mathison said. "They don't grow Pink Ladies, Cosmic Crisp and Grannies."
Cutting production
Mathison, Sauer and other presenters stressed that the most important metric for measuring the size of Washington's annual apple crop is no longer the amount of fruit on the trees, but rather the amount of fruit that can be packed and sold.
Zediker, the Yakima Valley grower and horticulturist, noted that he instructed his crews on the size, coloring and other factors of unpicked or "cull" fruit by leaving four apples with undesirable characteristics on the corner of each row. The goal was to leave as much culled fruit on the trees as possible.
More selective picking and better pruning of trees are among the most important skills to teach work crews, added Plath, of Yakima-based Washington Fruit.
"We've really made an emphasis the last few years on training," Plath added.
All of these options are among the ways Washington apple growers can get below the desired annual crop size of 125 million boxes, Mathison said.
"We must get below 125 million fresh boxes — by choice or by force," Mathison said.
That means a 12% reduction in harvested apples, whether by better sorting out lower grades and sizes of apples or by growers removing 12% of their worst-performing orchards.
Mathison's analysis used data from the past 10 years of apple harvests, starting with 2014, the last time 142 million 40-pound boxes of apples were produced. That amount was the original projection for this year, but as of Dec. 1 the new estimate for the 2025 crop is 131.5 million boxes, Mathison said.
He and DeVaney said the 2025 apple crop could be the bottom of the market — or not, with Mathison predicting the 2026 crop would not be much better.
"We anticipate large (amounts) of orchard removal after the 2025 crop," Mathison added. "We haven't seen the big acreage removal yet."
Editor’s Note: Further coverage of the WSTFA meeting’s discussion of cherry and pear industries and outlooks will appear in upcoming editions of the Yakima Herald-Republic.
© 2025 Yakima Herald-Republic (Yakima, Wash.). Visit www.yakima-herald.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
