What's being harvested now?

With Fresno County‘s diverse agriculture, some type of crop is harvested every month.

The end of August signals the beginning of harvest for many of Fresno County’s leading crops. Grapes, the County’s number one crop, are being harvested for many markets, and harvest of the County’s number two crop, almonds, is in full swing.

Harvest of grapes for wine has started, as noted by evening skies filled with headlights from the tall mechanical grape harvesters as they travel across the vineyards. Straddling the vines, the mechanical harvester moves down the row, shaking the grapes from the vines and transporting them with precision into a nearby gondola and eventually into a waiting truck for delivery to a nearby winery.

Mechanically harvested wine grapes are picked at night because the cooler temperatures allow the berries to come off the vines more easily, and cooler fruit during night harvest can delay fermentation, allowing more time to get the fruit in a controlled fermentation process at the winery.

This year, growers are encouraged by a more balanced supply and demand situation for most California wine varieties. According to earlier bunch counts, the 2008 crop does not differ much from last year’s. According to the Allied Grape Growers Web site, bunch counts were down from 2007, but not drastically, and they vary by variety. With harvest now underway, growers will have a better assessment of actual crop size.

The raisin grape harvest has begun, with crews picking and laying grapes on trays in the Del Rey, Parlier and Kingsburg areas this week. About 99.5 percent of the U.S. raisins and 45 percent of the world’s crop are produced within a 60-mile radius of Fresno.

While hand-harvest of raisin grapes is still a popular method, growers have turned to other less labor-intensive methods to make raisins. One popular method uses a mechanical harvester that shakes off the grapes and places them on a continuous paper tray to dry in between the rows. After drying, the machine picks up the tray and raisins. Another method, dried-on-the-vine, involves cutting the canes, but leaving the grapes under the canopy where they hang to dry. A mechanical harvester also is used to remove the dried bunches from the vines.  The temperature is significantly lower in the canopy compared to the ground, so drying takes longer. Both type of harvesting methods have begun in the County.

In addition, table grape harvest is continuing throughout the County, along with the ongoing harvest of mid-to-late season varieties of peaches, plums, pluots, figs, apples and Asian pears. The melon and processing tomato harvest continues on the west side.

Almonds are in various stages of harvest, with some varieties already have been shaken from the trees and are drying in the orchard, while others have been dried, picked up and taken to the huller. Still other varieties are have not yet been harvested. The market for California almonds remains strong. The California Almond Board reports almond exports to Western Europe increased 24 percent from 2006 and exports to Asia increased 20 percent. The board projects increasing export demand for this year’s crop as well.

Despite this being a dry year, this is the time of season that farmers do not want rain. A nice dry fall will give producers the chance to complete the ongoing harvests and to bring in major crops yet to come including cotton. After the fall, however, let the rain --- and snow – come!

According to Richard Matoian, Executive Director of the Western Pistachio Association, pistachio harvest began at the end of this week (August 29) and will continue for the next 40+ days.  Initial quality and nut size looks good.  The crop is estimated to be smaller than the record 2007 crop of 415 million pounds.  The estimate is somewhere around 260-280 million pounds for 2008.  The initial price is about 50 cents higher than last year due to demand and the smaller crop size.  California produces 98 percent of the nation’s pistachios.

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