Apple grapple

Washington State in the northwestern United States is the top apple grower in that country. It produced 6.7-billion tons of the fruit last year, reported the World Population Review, citing data from the US Department of Agriculture.

This year, its first production for export is forecast to be 124 million 40-pound boxes, the Washington State Tree Fruit Association said.

Canada is another big apple exporter with 406,201 tons produced last year. Its British Columbia (BC) province is among the top producers.

A report by the Canadian Press described the abundance of fruit in BC as a “carpet of apples” on orchard floors. But that happens when growers don’t harvest and just leave the apples to ripen from the trees and fall.

That likelihood is now worrying the BC Fruit Growers Association with the closure last month of the BC Tree Fruits Cooperative due to bankruptcy. The coop operates the only cold storage facility where local growers keep picked apples for up to 10 months before being sold. The BC apple growers are clamoring for the government to acquire the facility to save their crop.

Meanwhile, New York City’s Department of Education, which runs the largest public school system in the US, had ordered 279,000 cases of apples worth $5.6 million as part of its program to give its students fresh produce from the US Department of Agriculture.

The order made in March turned out to be three times as many apples as needed such that there are more apples than schools can use in three years, kitchen insiders said, according to New York Post (NYP).

Consequently, the department has been throwing away thousands of cases of rotting apples the last four months, reports NYP.

“They have apples every day — nothing but apples,” said the parent coordinator at a Bronx elementary school, wondering what happened to the peaches and mandarins the schools used to serve, according to NYP.

Some students are served two apples at breakfast and another two at lunch, a food worker said, while a mom said she was puzzled why her son was bringing home “extra apples,” NYP reported.