Growing Optimism For Tree Fruit
February 1, 2008 Good returns make growers happy. Happy growers make an industry conference a lot nicer place to be. Producers, processors, and shippers walk around like there is a tomorrow … and it might actually be profitable. Vendors like it because they’re closing deals and setting up others at the trade show. Researchers like it because the audiences seem to pay a little more attention and at least pretend to care about their work. Industry sales and marketing folks like it because no one’s accusing them of leaving money on the table. Organizers like it because everything seems to run more smoothly. Even the obligatory awards dinner seems more lively and engaging, the hotel catered meals more tasty. Well, that last one was a stretch.
That was how most people felt last December at the Washington tree fruit industry’s 103rd annual educational conference, sponsored by the Washington State Horticultural Association (WSHA). Nearly 2,000 people traveled through typically challenging winter weather to Wenatchee for nearly three days. As Jim Hazen, WSHA’s Executive Director noted, the annual affair has always been built on educational content and community involvement, but has increasingly added a third “c” — commerce.
Commerce means several things. First, registrations, memberships, and sponsorships provide critical resources for the WSHA to continue its work on behalf of the state industry. The all-day Spanish language session alone drew nearly 500 participants and those registration fees will be plowed right back into WSHA activities for this key community.
Second, educational and research presentations are much more geared towards commercial impact. The industry expects meeting content to have some impact on their sustainability and profitability. Every session in the conference was built around providing information and provoking thought that might deliver impact to the industry’s bottom line.
Third, vendors at the trade show, while still competing fiercely for sales, are also marketing their tools for the tree fruit industry to drive down unit production costs and get our consumers the best possible product.
From what I have seen, similar annual shows throughout the country, whether state or regional, have a similar approach (and were similarly successful!). Growers in Washington are no different than their colleagues elsewhere — good returns make them very happy. And that makes for happy meetings.
Solving The Labor Crisis
In Washington this year, the conference theme exemplified that approach: “Labor Pains: Delivering Solutions.” If labor isn’t an issue with commercial impact, I don’t know what is. It is not one that can be addressed without considering both policy and technology. The entire first day was built around those two foci.
Dr. Dave Barrett from the Olin College of Engineering in Massachusetts offered a vision of autonomous robotic technologies relevant to the tree fruit industry. Many such technologies, explained Dr. Barrett, first developed for military, manufacturing, or exploration of harsh environments (outer space, mines, oceans), can be adapted to orchard, storage, and packing operations.
Understandably, Washington tree fruit growers don’t have the same budgetary resources as the Department of Defense to develop autonomous vehicles. But such vehicles, once developed (and they have been), and adapted to agriculture (including an acceptable price tag) will have considerable impact.
Dr. Barrett argued this is not only possible, but will happen in the next decade. He shared a video of a typical modern tractor (happened to be orange) resembling many used right now in our orchards. His first-year class of Olin College engineering students applied their ingenuity to off-the-shelf components and turned that tractor into a full function, autonomous vehicle — for $30,000.
Combine further engineering refinements with a willing manufacturer, and growers could use those returns this year to purchase an after market module to retrofit their own tractors (regardless of color). Instead of waiting for Congress to act on immigration reform and the H-2A program to transmogrify into a user-friendly resource, they could turn highly labor-intensive and hazardous jobs like spraying and mowing into routine tasks on a 24-7 basis. The challenges: getting researchers like Dr. Barrett to come up with great ideas, getting manufactures to commercialize, and, perhaps the most daunting, getting a skeptical ag industry to buy in.
Support Needed
Our meeting did have a whole bunch of other sessions: food safety; product quality; sustainability; organics; genetics, genomics, and breeding; and engineering technologies. These sessions were full of terrific educational content, provoked considerable thought and discussion, and hopefully will have an impact on the bottom line of our tree fruit community.
We also had an entire session called the “H-2A Survival Guide” and a panel devoted to “Labor Survival in a Global Market” — necessary and critical topics, as is comprehensive immigration reform at national and state levels. Efforts to impact these policy areas are being very capably led by other industry groups: the U.S. Apple Association, the National Council of Agricultural Employers, the Northwest Horticultural Council, the WSHA, and many more.
I strongly support such efforts. At the same time, I feel our national specialty crops industries must have a proportionately energetic approach that develops and implements science-based information and technologies like those pioneered by Dr. Barrett and other scientists who are beating swords into plowshares.
Not everyone agrees. One panelist following Dr. Barrett’s presentation strongly objected to his assessment dollars being poured down a rat hole for research on robotic technologies. Some panelists echoed that sentiment, others did not, and explained why.
A good meeting, like the one we had in Wenatchee, provokes such vigorous discussion. An industry with a sustainable and profitable future requires such meetings and a vigorous examination of its future in a global marketplace. I hope the 104th is just as good and all our tree fruit growers have a profitable 2008 season. It makes for a happier meeting, even when you’re accused of pouring money down a rat hole.
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