Why the US government is buying more apples than ever before
08:41 Share

N P R.

This is the indicator from plant money. I'm daring woods here with reporters. Allen, Henry, Allen.

who going to the show? Thank you. daring.

I'm very sure to here you've brought a story, but also something in a bag. Tell me what?

Yes, I brought you this back of fresh apples.

Well, thank you very much. And did you just go apple picking?

You could say that I was just in the orchard of epilogue. They only make up a small percentage of the national market, but they had a ton of leftovers this year.

right west, beginning alone has around twenty five million pounds of apples of nowhere to go. That's around half of the usual harvest.

Yep, seven hundred truck lots.

Do we have a truck full of its apples outside? I do not, unfortunately.

But the U. S. D. A. Is planning to spend one hundred twenty million dollars on these apples and many, many more across the country.

right? So for the second consecutive year, this is the largest government purchase of apple products in american history. And so I question that is, why is this happening? Will IT keep happening? And in the long run, will small farmers need to grow fewer apples?

You ready for rochard there in? Yes, because we're gonna driving all around epl. Atta visiting orchard and growers will compare IT this year to past years.

his coasts to west coast. Apples, apples after the break.

This message comes from wise, the APP for doing things in other currencies, send spend a receive money internationally and always get the real time midd market exchange rate with no hidden fees. Download the wise APP today or visit wise, not didn't sea supply support .

for in P, R comes from in P R member stations? And eric and windy schmidt through the Smith family foundation, working together to create just world where all people have access to renewable energy, clean air and water and healthy food. The smile family foundation is part of the filthy pic organizations and initiatives created and funded by eric and windy chmidd to work toward a healthy, resilient, secure world for all on the web. At the schmidt work.

when voters talk .

during an election season, we list, we ask questions, we follow, and we bring along to hear what we learn, get closer to the issues, the people, and your vote at the mp. r. Elections up. Visit npr that work, splash .

elections as so, Allen, for the last two years you have visited Virginia and west Virginia to report on athlete's apple economy. That's right.

In central Virginia, one of the growers I met with john burgee. He's a seventh generation apple growers at dicky brothers orchard.

We're right here, the base, the priest mountain, right here, right above. At the peak, you look at the joy joyce an as the fort, the only thing you can hear, or crickets and birds.

John's family started planting trees here almost two hundred years ago.

We do have paintings that shows orchard be in planted here as early as eighteen thirty. Unfortunate that this property has been in our families since seventeen and fifty two, one of the three granted by king George's second of england. Unfortunately, the rural part of Virginia, where we're from, where have excess supply of tree fruit and just simply not enough to man.

In a typical year, around three percent of american apples go unsold. That's around three hundred fifty million pounds left to rot. But if you zoom min to john's neighbor state, west Virginia, around fifty percent of the harvest was sitting on the trees without buyers. And that's because the processing companies that Normally buy these apples and turn them into apple sauce and apple juice have lots of apples leftovers from last year.

These apples can be stored up to a year. And what's called controlled atmosphere storage, these are like giant refrigerators without oxygen, because i've become abundant and cheap. They've been buying while the buying is good.

Exactly to learn more about what's happening in the apple industry beyond apple, ata spoke with she's a professor of economics at washington state university. Washington produces the most apples in the country by far.

The profits that have been realized by the upper growers in the last twenty years have been consistently decreasing and especially this last year, right as the volume production increases. Moreover, the domestic consumption in the united states has stay stagnant.

so as apple yields go up with stagnant consumption, the Price of apples has been going down, in particular, what's called the farm gate Price, which is what grows receive over the past year, the fang gate Price has dropped more than fifty percent on some varieties of apples, but the Price people actually pay at the supermarket has dropped a lot less than only thirteen percent.

So companies that are large size and financially stable, I perhaps able to face this chAllenge with economics of scale and more efficient production systems. But uh, this small good is not able to face that this .

is exactly the issue that john is facing now because the market sets the Price and as his input costs like fertilizer and labor continued to rise, he can't sell all his apples for a profit anymore. This is why more and more family businesses are selling land consoler dating are being absorb by investment corporations.

But all is not last. The federal government is stuffing in to help create a market for these apples, at least in the short term, is doing IT through the farm bill. More specifically was something called a section thirty two.

right? And the resection thirty two purchases every year for commodities like potatoes, fish, meat, whatever happens to be in surplus, the idea is to purchase the surplus, keep the growers in business, and then donate the products to people in need.

Seems like a win, win.

win. IT is, at least in the short term. And IT takes a big effort on behalf of the U. S. D. A food banks in organizations like farm link, to help transport these apple, the hunger fighting charities across the country.

But over the past two years, section thirty two purchases for apples have topped more than one hundred million dollars, which is the most money the government has ever spent on apples, is an indicator of how desperate growers out to find a market.

In west Virginia, around half the harvest has been sold to the government and donated close by. And some is gonna far as the nova hoo nation.

That is pretty far. yep.

But I spoke to girls in states like pennsylvania, in Virginia, who weren't even aware that IT was possible to, well directly to the U. S. D.

A. anything. If they wanted to, they would have had to undergo W. A complicated vender .

certification process. And that's why most of the apples the government bought last year were from big commercial distributors and brokers, essentially middlemen who already had this vendor or certification. So Allen, was john able to sell any of these apples to the government?

Well, he's not exactly sure .

I may sell the distributor who got to grant money to do that, but i'd haven't received one directly since farmers .

like john aren't selling directly to the U. S. D. A. They're not receiving the best Price. In any case, john doesn't wanted depend on the government .

to get back as an entrepreneur, think it's a best business plan to rely on any government, state or local or federal, might be a short term fix, but there is no incentive for innovation or changed.

even if someone from U. S, D, A came to your doors that and said, john, I willing to buy all your extra fruit, do you think you would take IT they going .

to spend IT might take advantage of and to say that I wouldn't, I would would be filling myself. But I like I said, I don't think it's a good business plan to rely and IT might not happen next year. This attitude .

of self sufficiency goes hand in hand with avoiding what economists call moral has IT. This is when an economic actor like an apple grow a relaxed incentive to god against risk because they're protected by insurance. The worry is that they won't adapt to a changing market.

But to be honest, and that's not what i've seen personally, pretty much every girl I spoke to is adapting in one way or another to avoid dependency.

All of the goes that I know of my area every year, that's the discussion. Everybody pushes up at work.

And for john, that means cutting down his orchard from one hundred dakers to less than forty.

That was orchard not long ago and all those hills that you see on the left or they're all orchard, but we're cutting up for hey, realizing in some way to feel the animals john's .

diversifying his land use to become more resilient.

When people come in with all, you get sider, you get three people got apples, peaches, pears, plums, nettings. All the fall products that most people want .

will have is like a supermarket. You, I mean, you got everything. You really have everything.

You add the color of the sun of flowers that just had a little punch.

The sunflowers are there as a backdrop for weddings and events. Again, another way john is making new use of the space.

The X A rotate from easter west as the sun moves. And you can imagine a bride standing in front of that in the foreground, taking pictures for her wedding. And you .

welcome .

to I actually, we went from tobacco on the seventeen hours. We went to apples and eighteen hundred years and stayed into the nineteen hundred and one and two thousands. And who knows what the future may hold? OK.

this sounds like you've got a new wedding plan.

Yeah, who knows?

Thank you, Allen hinch for bringing us the story. Yeah, absolutely.

Thank you again for having me.

The episodes produced by Julia Ritchie with engineering by Megan lutha, was fact checked by curry bridges, caking canon as our editor. And the indicator is a production of npr.

This election season, you can expect to hear a lot of news, some of the meaningful, much of IT not give the up first podcast fifteen minutes, sometimes little less, and will help you sort IT out what's going on around the world. Handed home three stories, fifteen minutes up first every day, listen every morning wherever you get your podcasts.

It's a high stakes election year, so it's not enough to just follow along. You need to understand what's happening so you are fully informed. November every weekday on the entire politics podcast, are political reporters break down important stories and back story. Do you understand why that matters to you? Listen to the epr politics podcast wherever you get your podcast.

okay. So does this sound like you you love and P, S podcast, you wish you could get more of all your favorite chose, and you want to support N, P, S, mission to create a more informed public. If all that sounds appealing, then IT is time to sign up for the N P R plus bundle. Learn more at plus D N P R dot work.