That Old Standby: The Apple

I grew up in a small town in Northern Ontario. Being a small town near only other small towns, fresh produce wasn't always plentiful, particularly in the winter, so we grew up on a lot of frozen veggies. However, there were always apples available. My Dad took an apple in his lunch every day until his retirement.

British Columbia produces about 30% of the apples grown in Canada, mostly in the Okanagan-Similkameen valleys. BC apples are only harvested from August to October, and the apples we get the rest of the year are from elsewhere or from special storage facilities where the apples are preserved through careful control of temperature, humidity, atmospheric pressure, and other conditions. Though these specially designed facilities control the amount of ethylene produced by the fruit and otherwise slow its possible deterioration, some people do notice that apples that have been stored a long time are softer or have a less pleasant texture, especially at this time of year when they have been off the tree for such a long time.

Luckily, BC's weather so far this year have not impacted the apple trees. This is not the case elsewhere: farmers from New Zealand are struggling due to wet weather, and a very hot December and January period in Chile has impacted their crops. In fact, across all southern growing regions, record-breaking temperatures forced the fruit to ripen before it was fully grown, and some producers had up to 18% of the apples cracking because of this. In New Zealand, producers are opting to spray previously organic fruit and sell it as conventional because of an increasing problem with the apple moth. Shortages of organic apples, especially the very popular gala apple, are resulting, meaning an increase in prices across the board, even for locally grown stored apples.

What this means for apple fans is that you will probably see fewer varieties of apples and slightly higher prices for the next couple of months. We will continue to bring in local apples whenever possible, but when the California harvest begins in about 6 weeks, we may bring some of them in to increase the variety and quality of fruit. British Columbia's harvest shouldn't be far behind: we're expecting the first BC apples (usually Early Golds or similar) in about 8 weeks.

I'm so used to thinking of apples as being a dependable year-round standby that the idea that apples have a season is taking some getting used to, but that's been one of the hard lessons of climate change: when weird weather patterns change food production in another part of the world, we feel the impact here too, even if we're eating locally. In the meantime, the BC cherry and berry crops are predicted to be fantastic this summer - maybe my Dad will have to eat them instead of his apple.