“Change is in the wind,” an article in the Good Fruit Grower declared in 1987, which was a year of milestones for the Washington tree fruit industry. The industry harvested record apple and pear crops that year. The apple crop came in at 68 million boxes of apples, a leap of almost 25 percent from 1986. Red Delicious made up 73 percent of the crop, and the quality was “not vintage,” according to Good Fruit Grower reports. Of the 161,000 acres of apples in the ground in Washington State, 75 percent were Red Delicious, the Tree Fruit Survey of 1986 […]