Why a Leap of Faith Is Paying off for Some Stone Fruit Growers
September 27, 2022 If you’re a stone fruit grower, or really any tree fruit grower, be sure to check out the coverage American Fruit Grower (AFG) is featuring this month on growers’ efforts to move to the high-density growing systems now customary in modern apple orchards. I find it interesting because we found the growers doing it have virtually nothing in common except for the fact they are stone fruit growers.
AFG Senior Editor Tom Skernivitz has an excellent story that appears on the cover of this issue profiling Bittner-Singer Orchards, on the coast of Lake Ontario in Western New York, who will try growing virtually any tree fruit in a high-density planting system.
I was immediately intrigued when Tom told me about the Bittner family, dad Jim, and sons Kevin and David. I couldn’t help but think of a couple of growers I had profiled on the cover of the magazine in 2018, Jon McClarty and Drew Ketelsen of HMC Farms in Kingsburg, CA. Wondering how they were faring, I caught up with Jon and Drew and wrote an update.
After we published the original story on HMC Farms four years ago, I was at a large citrus growers meeting, and I got to talking with an elderly citrus/stone fruit grower in line at the lunch buffet about the story. I should note here that California citrus growers, especially larger ones, are adding stone fruit or merging with stone fruit growers because the two crops complement each other, as stone fruit is harvested in summer and fall, citrus in winter and spring.
The grower said I made it sound like high-density peach growing had never been tried before, adding that there was such an operation at least 20 years prior. They went broke, he said with a rueful smile. He couldn’t recall the name of the grower, but another grower in line overheard us, and he named the family of growers who’d gone into high-density peaches, shaking his head.
I asked the old-timers why the family who tried high-density peach growing failed. Both just said something to the effect that they were “out there.” I didn’t think much of it at the time, but now I realize that if that’s their recollection of the family, the family might not have been the best marketers. That’s crucial, as you can grow the best fruit in the world, but it doesn’t matter if you don’t have a plan to sell it.
The more I thought about it, the more I realized Bittner-Singer and HMC do share something in common, it’s just not in the horticultural realm, which we ordinarily explore. First off, they focus on how they are going to sell the fruit they grow. They also share this key characteristic: Some time ago, they took a hard look at themselves and their respective industries — regionalism is much more of a factor in stone fruit than in apples — and decided they needed to make a big change.
High-density fruit growing has worked for them, and it might work for more growers. Because of that, we’ll be featuring a lot more coverage on this topic. If you have specific questions, email me. We’ll try to answer all of them in our coverage in the coming year.
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