By
Kimberly Warren
Editor
Honeycrisp may not be the
easiest apple to grow, and it does have its fair share of challenges.
But in the end, the return is well worth all the hard work –
at least, that is, according to some of the growers who were featured
on the International Dwarf Fruit Tree Association’s (IDFTA)
summer tour.
In June, IDFTA toured six different orchards in Wisconsin and Minnesota
– all featuring Honeycrisp apples. Throughout the tour, numerous
concerns were raised about Honeycrisp: leaf mottling, variation in
color, bitter pit, soft scald and blue mold. But despite those concerns,
growers are still planting Honeycrisp and still enjoying the marketable
benefits of producing the apple.
“Honeycrisp is a great-tasting new apple variety that is utterly
miserable to grow, and that’s if you’re on a good site,”
said Dennis Courtier of Pepin Heights Orchard, one of the stops featured
on the tour. “If you’re on a bad site, it’s impossible.”
Courtier has 70 acres of the farm’s 300 acres devoted to Honeycrisp
apples. Along with those, the company also packs and sells for more
than 40 other growers of Honeycrisp.
“If your mentality is tonnage, this is not what you’re
going to get involved with,” Courtier said. “You have
to think qualitatively, not quantitatively, with Honeycrisp.”
Though many growers are growing Honeycrisp for their own retail markets,
Courtier’s wholesale business has proven to be very successful.
“There is a wholesale marketplace for Honeycrisp – it’s
a very demanding marketplace,” Courtier said.
And demand – whether wholesale or retail – is what keeps
driving growers to invest the time and energy into Honeycrisp.
“We’re really excited about Honeycrisp,” said Doug
Shefelbine, of Shefelbine’s Orchard. “What we’ve
seen in the retail is that 80 percent of our customers won’t
buy anything else.”
Shefelbine said their Honeycrisp apples are bringing in $30 per bushel,
whereas Cortlands, for example, command $5 per bushel.
“It’s an apple that we can make some money on,”
he said. “Why should you grow anything else?”
Shefelbine has 25 acres of Honeycrisp in production. Because right
now, there are no other apples as good as Honeycrisp.
And that’s what led Herdie Baisden, of Maiden Rock Apples, to
dedicate the majority of his apple plantings to Honeycrisp.
“We made a decision to plant the Honeycrisp based on our research,
our investigation of all the varieties that were available,”
Baisden said. “It just made sense to plant a large proportion
of our orchards in Honeycrisp.”
Maiden Rock has about 2,200 Honeycrisp trees – just more than
50 percent of all the apples at the farm. Most of the Honeycrisp are
sold at the farm’s retail locations.
“One has to be innovative, and you don’t want to fall
in love with any one variety,” Baisden said. “At the same
time, it’s important to make the best business decisions based
on the information available. My information says Honeycrisp is just
an excellent apple with few competitors.”
One concern all three growers expressed about the future of Honeycrisp
apples is the entrance of low-quality Honeycrisp on the market. As
soon as consumers start seeing low-quality Honeycrisp on the market,
they will not be willing to pay the premium that growers are now getting.
“Because of the idiosyncracies of producing the variety, it
has to command a lot in the marketplace,” Courtier said. “The
marketplace for $50-plus Honeycrisp will be destroyed by low-quality
goods that will be offered at a price for what the buyers are willing
to pay – the market for Honeycrisp will unravel from the bottom.”
But many of the growers realize that low-quality fruit will destroy
the current market that exists for Honeycrisp – and that’s
what’s going to help keep the market strong.
“One of the things a number of growers indicated they wouldn’t
do was to sell sub-par or lower-grade Honeycrisp because we didn’t
want to lower the value of the product in our marketplace,”
Baisden said. “While a number of growers continue to be committed
to that, I’ve seen some (Honeycrisp) in second tier supermarkets,
and I’m thinking ‘why are these here? This is not going
to help us.’”
Continued research and educating growers on the right growing areas
will allow Honeycrisp to remain successful, Baisden said.
“As long as we continue to grow Honeycrisp better, I think it
will be around for many years to come,” he said.
For now the demand remains strong, and growers continue to sell out
of Honeycrisp before the crowds stop asking for them.
“If (the grower) is a retail marketer, I don’t think it’s
too late (to plant Honeycrisp,” Shefelbine said. “If he
figures on running to chain stores, unless he’s in a prime growing
area, it’s too late.”
As more and more growers plant Honeycrisp, consumers won’t have
to go as far to look for the apples – and that could mean a
decrease in profits.
“Those growers in the right geography to produce top shelf stuff,
if they’re the only ones growing it, it will be a very good
variety for a long time,” Courtier said. “It (Honeycrisp)
looks like a life raft right now – if you try to pile too many
people on it, it will sink.”
And for Courtier, it is time to move on.
“Honeycrisp is going to be a big thing for a while,” Courtier
said. “It’s a really terrific eating apple when it’s
grown in the right place. My job is to grow what comes after Honeycrisp.”
Even though he said Honeycrisp apples are good apples that demand
high prices, Shefelbine will not be planting anymore, either.
“It’s not the next big thing if there’s something
else that’s better – and that’s what I’m looking
for in my seedling plots,” Shefelbine said. “The cycle
of apples is a lot shorter than it used to be – Red Delicoius
used to be the big thing in the ’40s and ’50s, and it
took 60 years to kill Red Delicious. I think Honeycrisp can be replaced
in 10 years.”
One thing still remains certain – Honeycrisp has meant a lot
of success for a lot of different growers.
“If it weren’t for Honeycrisp, I don’t think I would
be growing apples anymore,” Shefelbine said.
