RISING COMPETITION from China and the growing cost of labor from Mexico are conspiring to change the landscape in Washington apple orchards.

Where ladders and buckets were once the primary tools of apple pickers and maintenance workers, today they are increasingly being replaced by mechanized platforms. Sensors are helping sort apples. These and other changes promise to shake the industry.

"We have always dealt with change, but the pace of change is much faster now," says Bruce Allen, co-owner of Columbia-Reach, a Yakima-based packing and fruit-growing operation. "Everything will be different." The proof is that crops are conforming to technology. Instead of umbrella trees, grown for easy picking, planters are now encouraging more upright and thinner trees that make picking easier for motorized platforms. And as in any other industry, computers and information technology will be at the core of the production process.

Driving all of these changes is China. Apple yields in China are taking away export strongholds in Southeast Asia, which had been the industry's largest export market. China is also making inroads elsewhere. "China is taking away export markets in Europe for our lower-grade apples," says Charlie de La Chapelle, a Yakima Valley fruit grower. But China isn't the only country challenging Washington's influence in this field. Apples from Chile, New Zealand and Turkey are now finding their way to U.S. consumers. De La Chapelle says there are three prime apple-growing regions in the world: eastern Washington, Chile and parts of Turkey. But China is closing in on those leaders and has already driven down the price of apple juice.

Washington growers such as Yakima Valley orchardist Jerry Haak say they're at a disadvantage in this competition, because labor is cheaper in those other countries. And while the U.S. government struggles to curtail the flow of illegal immigrants from Mexico, Haak's costs continue to go up. "I am paying about 20 percent more for labor than three years ago," Haak says. He has 300 acres of fruit in production, and his labor costs account for about 50 percent of his production costs. Haak says to stay in business, production will have to rise along with wages.

Tighter border controls and closer scrutiny of workers' legal status have already made it more difficult for people like Haak to keep their costs down. With more trees (especially cherry trees) having been planted, and fewer illegal workers coming to Washington, laborers now seem to have the upper hand over employers. "I have had workers walk off the job in a cherry harvest for wages at $10 an hour," Haak says. "We have always had a supply of workers to harvest crops and do the task we had. We never had to operate under a scenario of more demand than supply for labor."

CHANGING CENTURIES OF TRADITION
There are still other challenges facing this state's apple growers. For one, retail grocery chains have consolidated. With fewer buyers and a greater supply of apples, the retail giants can be pickier about what they choose to purchase. These days, they're only buying apples, of all varieties, that meet requirements for larger size and more attractive color. That means rejected apples have to be sent to the juicer at a loss.

"The situation of the market right now is that [grocery chains] want the right fruit," says Haak. "They want the right size and the right color. Those are the apples that are making money. The rest are not making money." Apple growers have taken steps to improve quality and meet market standards, but at best, apples that are considered ideal apples constitute 40 percent to 50 percent of total crops, Haak explains.

The bottom line in all of this: between foreign competition and retail market demands, apple growers are making less and less money for their overall crops. "Our cost is going up, and the grades and sizes the warehouse pays for is going down," Haak explains.

Apple growers are turning to technology and mechanization to make up for worker shortages, increase productivity and improve fruit quality. Although technological innovations such as cold storage, which allows the packing houses to store apples on a year-round basis, have helped to expand the industry since the 1960s, until now there has been no change in the way apples were grown or harvested.

"We have been picking apples the same way since the Roman Era, with ladders and bags," reflects Yakima Valley fruit grower Jim Doornink. Moving up and down ladders to harvest and cultivate the trees is not only time-consuming and non-productive work, but it's also the cause of most injuries in the orchard, he explains. "If we can eliminate the ladder," says Doornink, "it will be a safer and more productive workplace."

Doornink acknowledges that a labor shortage is on the horizon and higher labor costs are a reality that will not go away. The solution is obvious, he suggests: growers have to find ways to make workers more productive. "We must bring the work to the person, rather than the person walking to the work with his ladders," he concludes. "The work must always be in front of him."

Researchers with Washington State University's extension programs and small farm equipment manufacturers in the Yakima Valley have teamed up to figure out how best to increase productivity. For the past three years, they have been experimenting with different machines that have been used for orchard work in Europe and New Zealand, where high labor costs have been a reality for many years.

In Europe, for example, many growers use a motorized orchard platform that can be raised, allowing workers to pick fruit as the platform slowly moves through the orchard. Gregg Marrs, owner of Washington's Blueline Manufacturing & Equipment Co., a Moxeebased manufacturer of motorized platforms and other farming equipment, traveled to France and Spain last year to investigate how farmers there were using platforms to reduce operating costs. He also wanted to allay any personal misconceptions that he might have picked up back home.

"The concept of using motorized platforms and auto-harvesting machines is not new," Marrs says. "They've been doing it [in Europe] for 15 years." While across the Atlantic, he visited a couple of manufacturers of such machinery, including Munhkoff in Holland and Argiles in Spain. Marrs distributes their harvesting machines and has sold two Munhkoffs to Bear Creek Orchards in Medford, Ore., where pickers use them to harvest apples and pears. Tri-Cities apple grower M.E. Witherspoon has a Munhkoff, as does Yakima's Olympic Fruit Co.

Blueline is now in an agreement with Argiles to manufacture platforms using that company's designs, and to be its distributor in the United States. Currently, Blueline is in the process of building two machines for a grower in Medford and yet another grower in Bear Creek.

Blueline also makes its own motorized platforms, including an eight-man citrus platform prototype, with which Southern Gardens Citrus Holding Corp. of Clewiston, Fla., is experimenting. Should that state's largest supplier of not-fromconcentrate orange juice accept the harvester, Marrs and company would expect several subsequent orders.

"It could mean 50 or more," Marrs enthuses.

In spite of the acceptance of motorized harvesters in Europe and among some Washington growers, though, many orchardists in this state are choosing not to mechanize. "There's not too many industries where you can remain stagnant for 40 years and survive," Marrs says of growers in the state who are reluctant to modernize. Turning to machinery for harvesting, he notes, makes picking less physically daunting and increases the pool of pickers. "That's what I noticed in Europe," he adds. "Most of the harvesting was done by elderly people and women."

A small number of growers in Washington are adapting, using the new mechanical platforms for thinning, pruning and training trees, but not yet for harvesting. That's because some orchard plantings are too closely arranged or just aren't laid out in a way that makes using a platform possible. Furthermore, transferring apples from the hand of the picker, to a platform conveyer belt, to a bin loader, to the bin, is far from smooth. Malcolm Hanks, owner of Yakima's Hardco engineering company, has designed a new type of loader that uses robotics to gently place fruit in the bins. It was created with the support of an $80,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, but is still in the refinement stage.

SKINNY TREES
Researchers have also developed thinner, more vertical fruit trees that receive more sunlight than do the older umbrella trees. These new trees produce a greater quantity of the big, blemish-free fruit that retail grocery chains demand.

In addition, Washington apple growers are using information technology and new tree stock to satisfy changing market demands. High-quality apples are the result of several factors, explains Tom Allan, orchard manager for Allan Brothers Fruit, Inc., of Naches. "It depends on the site, the root stock, how you manage water and fertilizing," he says, as well as "the disease situation and pest control, which is related to temperature, moisture and humidity." Probes, sensors and information systems that can transmit data from remote locations all allow growers to collect more precise information on soil conditions, temperature, moisture and humidity. With such information, they can apply exactly the right amount of water and fertilizer at the appropriate time and place.

Technology and mechanization may provide apple growers an answer to the challenges of international competition and the demands of the marketplace, but it is expensive (Munhkoff's harvesters run upwards of $60,000 apiece) and comes at a time when profit squeezes are forcing many growers to economize. It's about survival, Haak contends. "I have little choice," he says, "but to invest in the new technologies."

George Finch is a Toppenish-based journalist.