Why Fruit Research Needs Your Help To Keep Growing
December 27, 2022 Lately, too many of the folks I’ve been talking to involved with fruit research/Extension have either recently retired or are planning to retire. It wouldn’t bother me so much, but they don’t seem to be getting replaced at nearly the same rate.
No doubt the folks I contacted for the content in this particular issue had an effect on me. Bob Curtis, who retired as Research Director for the Almond Board of California a few years back, made me feel a pang of nostalgia talking about the early days. Not that I was there, but I was there when Bob returned to the ABC in 2006, and the industry was small relative to today but bursting with energy.
In October, I caught John Roncoroni’s presentation at the California Pest Control Advisers annual meeting in Anaheim dealing with weeds in grapes. Seems kind of strange with such a huge industry, but Roncoroni, who retired a couple years ago, was the last grape weed specialist in the U.S.
But this last retirement announcement stings most of all. Greg Lang, our longtime sweet cherry columnist from Michigan State University (MSU), is retiring. Worst of all for me personally, his last column appears in this December issue.
Although he’s retiring from MSU — and his American Fruit Grower column — he’s staying on as Research Director of the International Fruit Tree Association.
Why? Greg is the mellowest of guys, gets a heck of a lot done, and has a vision for the future. Fortunately for IFTA, he’s expanding their focus, which has always been on apples, and, to a lesser degree, cherries. But Greg was working in peaches as well as cherries, and he knew that the principles of the modern apple orchard apply to peaches. With the help of Jim Schupp of Penn State University and others, he has pointed the organization in a direction U.S. peach growers would be wise to follow closely and consider implementing.
So, you might be wondering why Greg was our sweet cherry columnist, when he’s been such a fierce advocate for new peach production systems. Actually, if you’ve got a lot of experience in the fruit industry, you know full well why Greg wrote about cherries.
Before coming to MSU, he was at Washington State University. In fact, he developed a few cherry varieties there, including ‘Tieton’, which is named after the town in that state. ‘Tieton’, incidentally, is planted widely in China, though they call it a different name, or names, as you might expect. The trees were not necessarily planted with anyone’s permission, including Greg, who merely laughs at the prospect.
The great thing about folks retiring is that every organization needs fresh blood. A lot more folks are retiring from Extension than are being hired. On the bright side, many of the new hires are women and people of color, there just aren’t enough of them.
This situation is not going to correct itself. Take a tip from growers in both Washington and Michigan who have taxed themselves to provide the money to pay for new researchers. If the land-grant university you deal with is not hiring people who want to push the envelope on the exploding area of agricultural technology, why not? Are you giving them the support they need?
Pony up some cash for research. Industries that fail to adequately invest in R&D, to move forward with a plan for the future, don’t have the greatest record. Fruit growers are known for thinking and planning for their future — just don’t forget your industry as a whole.
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