World’s Tree Fruit Growers Meet In Washington
March 2, 2011 
Several hundred growers from the world’s top fruit production areas converged on Pasco, WA, Sunday for a week of meetings and orchard and packinghouse tours. The 54th annual meeting of the International Fruit Tree Association highlighted “Sustainable Innovation,” and attracted growers hungry for the latest and greatest information from progressive growers in top apple and cherry production state in the U.S.
One highlight of IFTA’s opening weekend was a pre-conference field tour at Broetje Orchards, which has more than 6,000 acres of apples and cherries. Ralph Broetje, a former American/Western Fruit Grower Apple Grower of the Year, showed off the largest contiguous orchard in the U.S. The 4,300 acres stretch along in a virtually frost-free microclimate that stretches for nearly 10 miles of the Snake River.
Tour participants learned a little of Broetje’s remarkable story, that of a 12-year-old boy who once dreamed of feeding hungry children with plentiful apples. Broetje has made his dreams come true, not only becoming a successful tree fruit grower and packer, but developing a small community for some of his 1,100 year-round workers that features housing, a church, and schools. The isolated farmworker housing development even has its own market for the employees’ convenience.
Broetje said that despite his efforts, labor remains his biggest worry right now because of political change in Washington, D.C. “It’s a big concern for the families out here, and it’s a big concern for us as a business,” Broetje told the four busloads of tour participants in the employee break room at his packing facility. “We need to do the right thing for immigration reform, but it doesn’t look very likely.”
Asked about managed or so-called club varieties, Broetje said he’s had some success with Opal. A vivid yellow colored apple from the Czech Republic, he has an exclusive on the apple in North America. Tour participants sampled the variety before heading out on a tour of the packinghouse, remarking on its crunch and pleasant sweet-tart flavor.
Despite his remarkable success — Broetje packs about 30,000 boxes of apples per day on packingline with 56 drops, with the largest sizer in North America — the modest Broetje said he’s made his share of mistakes through the years. For example, while he planted the wildly successful Honeycrisp variety way back in 1993, he pulled the trees two years later after suffering problems with bitter pit. “Then I decided that was a mistake,” he said to the laughter of the audience, “so I planted them again four years later.”
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