This article from NYTimes.com has been sent to you by Gene Coyle [EMAIL PROTECTED] Pen-L More on agriculture Gene Coyle [EMAIL PROTECTED] /-------------------- advertisement -----------------------\ LOOKING FOR A TRULY HIGH-SPEED INTERNET EXPERIENCE? Then visit Alcatel.com and see what makes us the world's leading supplier of DSL solutions. Alcatel, world leader in DSL solutions. http://www.nytimes.com/ads/email/alcatel/index.html \----------------------------------------------------------/ 'Perfect' Apple Pushed Growers Into Debt http://www.nytimes.com/2000/11/04/national/04APPL.html November 4, 2000 By TIMOTHY EGAN ORONDO, Wash., Nov. 2 Nearly a half-century ago, the farmers in these dun-colored valleys east of the Cascade Mountains set out to create the perfect apple. It would be lipstick red; broad-shouldered; uniform in size, color and crispness; a health food that would look as dazzling as an ornament on a Christmas tree. In time, they refined the Red Delicious apple into an American icon, fit for a teacher's desk, a child's lunch box, a dieter's dash out the door. The growers produced these apples like widgets coming off a factory line far more than they could ever sell. And while many people raved about the apples, other consumers complained that the fruit did not taste like the original Red Delicious. Losses piled up. And now the bill has come due. Last month, Congress approved and President Clinton signed the biggest bailout in the history of the apple industry, after the government reported that apple growers had lost $760 million in the last three years. But while apple farmers blame their woes on a variety of troubles unfair competition with foreign growers, oversupply, low prices paid by wholesalers many of them now talk openly about their own role in the collapse of one of the last sectors of American agriculture still dominated by family farms. In trying to create the perfect apple for major supermarket chains, these farmers say, they may have sacrificed taste to cosmetics. The growers say their story is like a fable with lessons for how the nation produces its fresh food. "Nobody should feel sorry for us we did this to ourselves," said Doyle Fleming, a lifelong apple farmer who has been gradually replacing his Red Delicious trees near this village along the Columbia River with newer varieties. "For almost 50 years, we've been cramming down the consumer's throat a red apple with ever thicker skin, sometimes mushy, sometimes very good if done right, but a product that was bred for color and size and not for taste." Mr. Fleming's son, Tye, sliced open a big Cameo apple with just a blush of color and an intense, juicy core. It had just come off the tree, and the flavor was something rarely found in a supermarket apple. "Good apple, huh? Tell you what: It's not red enough to get the highest grade that brings the best price," he said. "But if we go any redder with this apple, it starts to lose something." Across the river from the Fleming farm, smoke rose from an old Red Delicious orchard that a farmer was burning, after going broke. By some industry estimates, up to 20 percent of American apple farmers will go out of business this year even with a just-approved package of federal relief that will pay up to $30,000 each to people who have raised apples for at least two of the last three years, regardless of whether they made money. "What happened was, a whole growing system evolved around color and shape, because that's what the big buyers wanted," said Steve Fox, the marketing director of a fruit packing and storage company here in the heart of apple country. "So they made the apples redder and redder, and prettier and prettier, and they just about bred themselves out of existence." The growers say they established color, size and firmness standards in response to the major supermarket chains, who wanted a consistent product that caught the eye of the harried shopper. Many apple farmers have started to grow popular new varieties like Fujis, Galas and Granny Smiths, but most orchards are still producing the old standbys, at huge losses. To watch the last of this year's plump, rosy-looking apples being picked and packed off to storage on golden afternoons in November, it seems incongruent that this industry could be in such trouble. Apples are heralded as a health food, a source of antioxidants, linked in recent studies with inhibiting the growth of colon cancer and reducing the risk of lung cancer. Apples are also rich in pectin, which has been shown in some studies to lower blood cholesterol. But while Americans have been eating more fruits and vegetables over the last 10 years, per capita consumption of apples has remained flat. In creating an apple that packs well, looks terrific, shines to a glossy polish and can live year-round in cold storage, the growers have produced something many of them no longer recognize. "I was in Israel recently and bit into a Red Delicious apple grown there, and I just about fell on my back," said Paul Thomas, a retired winemaker whose family has been growing Washington apples since the early 1900s. "I thought, `This is what it used to taste like.' They pick the apple and put it on the grocery shelf the next morning." More than 2,500 apple varieties are grown in the United States by about 9,000 growers, though 15 varieties account for 90 percent of the crop. This year's harvest, estimated at 10.6 billion pounds, is close to the record yield of 1998. But in the face of such plenty is calamity. "For sale" signs are ubiquitous in apple country, and bankruptcies are common. The $138 million in government money is bittersweet relief. Unlike other agricultural producers, who are accustomed to getting taxpayer aid not to grow crops or to make up price differences, apple farmers have long been a fiercely independent lot who boast of their freedom from federal subsidies. This year, the farmers are lining up for checks in time for Christmas, with most of the money going to growers in the three biggest apple- producing states Washington, Michigan and New York. Some of the money is for crop loss from hail and other storms that hit farmers hard, particularly in New York. But the biggest portion will go for direct payments to farmers for what the government classifies as "market loss," which means not selling apples at a profit. Red Delicious growers, for example, are receiving about 30 cents a pound for apples that cost up to 40 cents a pound to produce, though they sell for roughly $1 a pound in stores. Farmers and the apple trade associations say the bailout will not do a thing to solve the underlying problems of the industry. By encouraging some marginal farmers to hold on, the government may even be prolonging the problems, some growers say. "Those farmers who say, `My grandpa was a Red Delicious grower, and my dad was a Red Delicious grower, and I'm going to stay with Red Delicious' those guys are going to die," Mr. Fox said. "I'm going to be right there in line to get my money, but it will not change a thing it's a Band-Aid," said Bruce Grim, chairman of the Washington Apple Commission. "Until we change the economics of this industry, we're going to be in trouble." All this trouble is prompting a kind of soul-searching rarely seen among farmers. "We pride ourselves on independence from government," said Kraig Naasz, president of the United States Apple Commission, the industry's major trade group. "In order to ask for help, you have to admit that things are going worse than you ever imagined." In the ruins of the nation's apple industry, some farmers see a renaissance by returning to the days before supermarket chains dictated uniform size and color. In Wisconsin, for example, the state's 300 growers have held on by selling directly to consumers everything from antique varieties to new strains of apples. Many growers in New York's Hudson Valley are doing the same thing. These apples may be bicolored or striped or come in odd sizes. "Most apple farmers in Wisconsin are very close to the consumer," said Anna Maenner of the Wisconsin Apple Growers Association. "People like the odd strains. There's no one- size-fits-all." And even among Washington farmers, who produce about 60 percent of the nation's fresh apple crop, growers are racing to plant new and old varieties. "The apple industry is reinventing itself," Mr. Naasz said. "Whether it is effectively reinventing itself or not remains to be seen." And in the Cameo apple, some growers see nature leading them out of their problems. The apple appeared by chance in a Washington orchard, a hybrid that seems to be a cross between Red Delicious and Golden Delicious. It is freckled with white and red, and has a somewhat thin skin. Because of its odd size and color, it would not be accepted as the high- grade, industry-approved standard Red Delicious. "But a lot of people say this is just what the old Red Delicious apple used to taste like," Doyle Fleming said. The New York Times on the Web http://www.nytimes.com /-----------------------------------------------------------------\ Visit NYTimes.com for complete access to the most authoritative news coverage on the Web, updated throughout the day. Become a member today! 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