—story and photos by Matt Milkovich
The past year has been a challenging one for the U.S. apple industry. Prices fell continuously throughout the season, while input costs continued to rise.
From August 2023 to July 2024, grower prices for a 40-pound box of Honeycrisp dropped from $67.85 to $30.55, a decline of 55 percent. Prices for most other popular varieties fell precipitously, too, said Chris Gerlach, the U.S. Apple Association’s vice president of insights and analytics.
Gerlach and other speakers addressed the difficult situation during USApple’s annual Outlook conference in August. One of the panels discussed a new campaign designed to help lift the industry out of its doldrums by boosting long-term apple consumption.
“This is something we maybe should have recognized a few years ago, so we wouldn’t be in the situation we’re in today,” said Kari Soldaat, director of sales at Riveridge Produce Marketing in Michigan.
Organizers are calling it the Eat More Apples campaign. They plugged the project at summer field days and meetings, seeking participation from every apple-growing state and region. They advocate for a collaborative, industrywide campaign focused on driving fresh apple consumption in the domestic market. And they said they have no plans to charge grower assessments or taxes to fund it.
Eat More Apples is a nationwide effort, nonprofit and volunteer-led. It will not focus on any particular region, brand or variety, only on fresh U.S. apples as a whole, said panelist Brenda Briggs, vice president of Rice Fruit Co. in Pennsylvania.
Soldaat said apples are still the second-most consumed fruit (after bananas) domestically, but sales continue to decline. Meanwhile, grape, berry and avocado sales are surging.
The current apple oversupply and shrinking export percentages are contributing to the low prices hurting the U.S. industry, but declining consumption poses a longer-term problem, Soldaat said. Nearly one-third of U.S. households don’t purchase apples at all.
“They’re telling us they prefer other fruits,” Soldaat said. “They’re telling us apples are too expensive. They’re also telling us they feel the quality is not where it used to be.”
Consumers also are hearing “a lot of noise” that they shouldn’t buy apples at all — with some of those messages coming from other fruit categories, she said.
The effort to create the Eat More Apples campaign started last fall, when Julie DeJarnatt, vice president of marketing and brand strategy for Chelan Fresh in Washington, started floating the idea to people in the industry. She aimed to identify the causes of declining apple consumption in the U.S., then use that information to create a marketing campaign that will make consumers and retailers excited about apples again.
“There’s no way for shoppers to understand why they should be eating more apples if we’re not telling our story,” DeJarnatt said. “We need to show that the industry is united on this.”
Fortunately for the apple industry, it has a fantastic story to tell, said panelist Kaari Stannard, president of Yes! Apples in New York.
So, if Eat More Apples won’t be funded by grower assessments, how will it be funded? DeJarnatt discussed the nuts and bolts in an interview with Good Fruit Grower. Campaign organizers will start by asking for financial support from suppliers and other companies that rely on the success of the U.S. apple industry. There are already companies that want to donate, she said, but the campaign had to establish its final structure before it could accept them.
There is no minimum or maximum donation size, and the campaign will also accept in-kind donations that give access to target demographics. One example would be the inclusion of Eat More Apples messaging in retail marketing campaigns, she said.
Beyond that, DeJarnatt hopes to tap investors who want to support the concept of “sustainability” — and there’s nothing more sustainable than the fresh apple industry, she said.
Another possibility: partnering with health care providers on preventative care and early childhood nutrition efforts. Apples are a great solution to current concerns about “wellness” and “gut health,” she said.
DeJarnatt wants to keep the campaign’s overhead costs down, and she doesn’t want to spend money on staffing. Eat More Apples currently has seven working committees, all volunteer at the moment, including a group made up of registered dietitians. They’re following U.S. Food and Drug Administration guidelines closely to make sure any health claims they make are legally clear.
In late August, the campaign’s volunteer board of directors was still working out the group’s organizational and financial structure. Board members were planning a small-scale pilot program to test their marketing strategies. They’re also in the process of trademarking “Eat More Apples” as a potential slogan. By late August, 318 people had signed a letter on the campaign’s website (eatmoreapples.org) supporting the concept of a marketing campaign, DeJarnatt said.
While seeking support, DeJarnatt said she has encountered a few “industry naysayers” who “believe in a model where the last man standing is going to win.” But she believes a marketing campaign that grows consumption for all fresh U.S. apples will give orchards of every size and type the opportunity to thrive.
U.S. apple crop estimate down from last year
The U.S. Apple Association predicted the size of the 2024–25 U.S. apple crop at 259.6 million 42-pound bushels — which would be 10.1 percent smaller than the 2023–24 U.S. crop. USApple made its final prediction Aug. 16, during its annual Outlook conference in Chicago.
The estimate for the top production state, Washington, is 155 million bushels, which includes both fresh and processing apples. Rounding out estimates from the other top producers: New York 31 million bushels, Michigan 30.5 million bushels, Pennsylvania 11.5 million, California 5.5 million, Virginia 4.8 million, and Oregon 3.6 million. The estimate for the remaining states is 17.7 million bushels.
Internationally, China will continue to dominate the world market, producing an estimated 2.1 billion bushels in 2024–25, a 2 percent increase compared to 2023–24. European production is expected to shrink by 11 percent to about 545 million bushels. South America is expected to decline by 15 percent compared to last year, producing 116 million bushels. Mexico will produce 43 million bushels, up 1 percent. Canada will increase production by 7 percent to almost 21 million bushels.
—M. Milkovich
NFL makes apple marketing a snap
Apple growers need to tell their stories to consumers. But how can they cut through all the media noise and get a consumer’s attention?
Partnering with the National Football League doesn’t hurt.
NY 1, the apple marketed as SnapDragon, became the official apple of the Buffalo Bills in 2022.
When Crunch Time Apple Growers, which markets SnapDragon and NY 2 (marketed as RubyFrost), first approached the Bills about working together, they emphasized the fruit’s health benefits and the fact that SnapDragon is grown exclusively in New York state. A lot of NY 1 apples are grown in Western New York, not far from Buffalo.
“It’s two New York brands working together,” said Jessica Wells, Crunch Time’s executive director. “We have to do something special to make people notice.”
Crunch Time sets up a booth at tailgate parties before Bills home games. They created a mascot, Snappy the Dragon, to attend tailgates, trade shows and other promotional events. During tailgates, they give out thousands of packs of SnapDragon slices made specially for the occasion. By the second season, people were seeking out the SnapDragon booth and grabbing bags by the handfuls.
“It’s gone over really well,” Wells said. “It’s a blast to hear people say, ‘Wow, these really are the best apples I’ve ever tasted.’”
In the first year of the partnership, SnapDragon sales went up 20 percent overall and nearly twice that in the Buffalo area, Wells said. However, the trend didn’t continue and over the past year sales fell from that high point, reflecting poor apple sales across the country, she added.
But other brand-building benefits have accrued through the partnership. New York grocery chain Wegmans, one of Crunch Time’s top retail customers, also has a Bills partnership, she said.
Crunch Time has formed partnerships with individual Bills players, too.
“If you’re nurturing athletes, apples are a logical fit,” Wells said. “It’s something players can get behind as a healthy life choice.”
Reid Ferguson, a long snapper for the Buffalo Bills since 2016, started promoting SnapDragon apples more than a year ago. When Crunch Time first approached him, Ferguson saw a natural fit. The “snap” in long snapper and SnapDragon was a “funny piece of the puzzle,” he said. And his family eats a lot of fruits and vegetables, especially apples. His two young daughters love SnapDragon.
“We obviously think they’re delicious,” Ferguson told Good Fruit Grower in a phone interview.
His teammates like SnapDragon, too. Since the Bills started partnering with Crunch Time, SnapDragon apples and SnapDragon cider have been in the players’ cafeteria, and they are always consumed, he said.
Ferguson and a couple of his teammates did a “content day” at their practice facility last fall, where they bobbed for SnapDragons, used them to practice long snaps, and basically goofed off for social media. The long snapper has made SnapDragon streusel and included the apple in recipes in his Instagram posts for Grills Mafia, the barbecue company he founded.
“I mixed my two worlds with SnapDragon apples and barbecue,” Ferguson said.
—M. Milkovich
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