They are also trying for more federal dollars, which I have to admit I have mixed emotions on. Some of the details from this Excite News Money feature:
With the Farm Bill up for renewal this year for the first time since 2002, apple growers are pressing for an unprecedented amount of federal funding to develop technologies to make harvesting less costly, and aid to develop overseas markets.
Even before new questions were raised this year about how well China enforces food safety rules, some growers were also pressing the U.S. government to require country-of-origin stickers on all apples.
"We're facing a threat that we've never faced before in terms of their ability to come in and essentially replace every apple that we produce in this country numerically and at a much lower cost," said John Rice, a seventh-generation grower whose grandfather made money in the Depression era by gathering apples from area growers and shipping them to England in 100-pound barrels.
Rice's family today owns 1,000 acres of orchards and packs and markets apples for 50 area growers primarily in Pennsylvania's historic growing area in Adams County, on the Maryland border.
"We have to lower our costs and we have to do what other successful business have done in the face of Chinese competition and that is to innovate, to stay ahead, to either grow new varieties that they don't grow in China, or whatever it takes," Rice said.
Fifteen years ago, China grew fewer apples than the United States. Today, it grows five times as many — nearly half of all apples grown in the world.
China's advantage is its cheap labor. A picker makes about 28 cents an hour, or $2 per day, according to the U.S. Apple Association. In 2005, workers in Pennsylvania made about $9 to $10 per hour, and those in Washington state about $14 per hour, the association said.
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