3 Takeaways To Make You a Better Fruit Grower

It’s no secret there’s been tremendous turbulence in the apple industry in the past several years. Despite a smaller crop this year — especially in dominant Washington state — prices aren’t up commensurately. Worse, the prices growers pay for key inputs are up substantially, and labor costs continue to soar. Of course, that’s if you can secure a labor supply at all. This year some growers couldn’t find people who wanted to work during the growing season, and apples didn’t get hand thinned.

You have to be on your toes in this business, but you can’t forget what got you here. Watching the video we produced of the 2024 American Fruit Grower Apple Grower of the Year, Tim Welsh, I couldn’t help thinking every apple grower should see this video.

About receiving the award, Welsh said: “It’s quite an honor to be Apple Grower of the Year, and when I think about it, I think about the relationships that have been built over the years with people and how that’s really, probably, what elevated me to this honor. It’s not something that I expected, for sure, but knowing that it comes from other people and friends, it’s why it’s gratifying.”

Notice how he emphasizes that it was his relationships that were key to helping him win the award, and the best part about winning was that it came from those relationships.

1) Nice Guys Can Finish First — Fruit growing can be as sociable as you want it, and I’ve known more than one grower who’d rather be with his trees than his friends. There’s nothing wrong with that, but if you’re going to be successful, you need to be more of a team player.

Said one nomination for Welsh: “In my visits to his farms, he was also proud to introduce his farm managers and employees (many of whom developed to those positions with his tutelage), extolling their contributions and sharing any recognition directly with them. “He really values and cares about all the team members.”

2) Grow Better Fruit — This is every grower’s goal, but how do you go about it? One tried and true method is to grow apple varieties that consumers love. A lot of Welsh’s success is due to the fact that when some of the more successful new varieties — from ‘Gala’ back in the day — to the more recent club, or managed varieties, such as ‘KIKU’.

Says Welsh: “Through acquaintances and friends I got to know some people who were trying to develop or offer out for license their managed varieties. And that got me both into working that end of licensing and developing relationships with licensors and actually planting the product in the field. Because really what I wanted to do was grow it.”

3) Adapt to Change — Welsh was also one of the first growers in the U.S. to use mechanical pruning to convert traditional orchards to planar canopies suitable for mechanization and automatization of harvest, commonly known as “fruiting walls.”

He’s an early adopter of technology, especially the sensors providing real-time data from the orchards. Besides technology, Welsh has adapted to personal challenges.

“Columbia Fruit Packers was bought out by a private equity group in 2022, so my job transitioned. A job I’d had for 34 years at the time transitioned to a new job, a new company, new people, and so it’s been a unique change. But I feel like I’ve been in this industry that long, sort of in the same sort of evolving role, with my feet on the ground first as a field man, and then moving into orchard management, and then finally overseeing orchards for all of my company.”