Knouse Foods is a large fruit-processing company with seven processing plants in three states and 1,500 employees packing apple sauce, apple juice, apple slices, apple butter, vinegar, and cherry and apple pie fillings. While it is a cooperative owned by about 150 Appalachian apple growers, it buys fruit from more than 600 growers, reaches into 70,000 acres of orchards, and has annual sales approaching $300 million—about the same as the Washington State fruit processing cooperative Tree Top. Knouse has processing plants in Michigan and West Virginia and five in Pennsylvania. Since 2000, Ken Guise, a Pennsylvania fruit grower, has led […]