CHELAN, Wash. – On a rainy day in the hills above Lake Chelan, Dave Robison is checking on his blossoming apple trees.

Days earlier he had sprayed the trees across his 120-acre orchard to cull some blossoms, leaving only the hardiest.

It’s a job Robison remembers doing with his dad. Before that, it was a job his grandfather first started doing in the Chelan area in the late 1950s. Now, it’s a task he carries out with his 27-year-old son.

But midsize apple orchards like the Robisons’ are disappearing.

About a decade ago, there were 4,000 independent apple growers in Washington. Today there’s 1,450, according to Todd Fryhover, president of the Washington Apple Commission.

That trend isn’t unique to apple growers.

Across the state, midsize farms are being stamped out by economic and social pressure. The apple industry, the state’s top crop, highlights some of the reasons for an increasingly consolidated industry.

“I know more than one farmer who is still farming real hard and they’re 80 years old,” Robison said. “There are too many parts of it that are outside our control.”

“You can be the best farmer in the world and still go broke,” he said.

The industry and the culture

In early May, thousands of people lined the streets of downtown Wenatchee to watch the Stemilt Growers 98th Washington State Apple Blossom Festival Grand Parade.

A pink and silver, tinsel-covered, Apple-shaped structure sat on the lead float. Two teenagers, the apple blossom queen and princess, waved as spectators clapped.

“Someone in your world is involved in the apple industry. That’s how it is here,” said Darci Christoferson. “You’re somehow committed to the apple industry.”

Christoferson is the Apple Blossom Festival organizer and a former queen.

Christoferson said 100,000 people will attend the 11-day festival, with its parade, car show and other events, designed to celebrate the blossoming of the state’s dominant agricultural crop.

Outlying towns create their own floats. The parade, which lasted about an hour and a half, featured high school marching bands, victorious high school sports teams and 4-H clubs.

“I always say Apple Blossom is kind of a family reunion,” Christoferson said.

Wenatchee’s moniker? Apple Capital of the World.

A day prior to the parade, Bob Bossen drove along the outskirts of Wenatchee. Stopping his truck in the middle of the road, he pointed toward a half-built subdivision. The sprouting houses are being built on former orchard land.

“Field men are probably the worst drivers in the world, because we’re always gawking at orchards,” he said.

But more and more, what he’s pointing at isn’t an orchard – it’s a housing development.

Bossen has been a horticulturist for 45 years. His grandfather owned apple orchards, as did his father. But Bossen sold his land – about 15 acres – to a larger grower when his children weren’t interested in continuing the business.

Now he works for the Northern Fruit Company, helping to keep the orchards healthy. The industry has changed, he said. Fewer and fewer young people are interested in getting into an increasingly competitive and difficult business.

“There has been a lot of consolidation in our industry,” said Fryhover, of the commission. “It is continuing to happen and I think you see that in all agriculture.”

Higher yields, better technology, fewer farmers

Data from the United States Department of Agriculture’s census shows a decrease in midsize farms in Washington. In 1997, there were 8,446 farms between 50 and 219 acres in size.

In 2012, there were 7,276 farms that size.

It’s the same story across the nation. According to a 2014 article by Daniel Sumner, a professor of agricultural and resource economics at the University of California, Davis, the size of commercial farms has more than doubled in the last 20 years.

“Commercial agriculture in the United States is comprised of several hundred thousand farms, and these farms continue to become larger and fewer,” Sumner writes in the conclusion of the article.

The Washington apple industry is no different. In the past 10 years, the number of independent growers has dropped from 4,000 to 1,450, a 63 percent decrease even though the overall acreage is about the same.

Dave Robison said that decrease is due to the unique nature of the apple business. On average, apple farmers might get 40 bins per acre, while some growers are producing more and others produce less.

“You take wheat, everybody basically produces the same,” Robison said. “But in tree fruit some guys can be making three or four times more than the others.”

Part of what makes the increased productivity possible is new technology and orchard planting systems. However, implementing those systems can be cost prohibitive for small operations.

Once those systems are in place and orchardists become more efficient, the gap widens between large and small.

“It’s never been like it is right now, never,” Robison said.

Karina Gallardo, a professor at Washington State who studies the economics of tree fruit, said several factors are leading to consolidation.

The first, she said, is the rising costs of starting an orchard or breaking into the business.

There’s also the time element: It can take a long time for farmers to get paid for their crop.

She’s also seen an increase in the cost of storing, packing, shipping and marketing fruit. And at the end of the tree-to-table process, it is difficult for midsize farmers to negotiate with consolidated retailing.

Gallardo hasn’t studied the issue of consolidation. Instead, she relies on what she has been told and observed.

Robison also attributes the consolidation to increasing government regulations.

“It’s just mind-boggling the regulations that come up. When a big company comes across a new regulation, if they have to, they can hire somebody who can (navigate) it,” Robison said. “But as small farmers, we just have to deal with it all.”

Mark Powers, the president of the Northwest Horticultural Council, said increased oversight usually means increased costs.

“All of that drives costs,” he said. “If you’re a small grower, it’s very difficult to pay for the expertise, basically the full-time attention that is required to be in compliance to all of these requirements.”

Fryhover is quick to point out that Washington’s apple industry remains dominated by family-owned enterprises, from the orchards to the packing plants. However, those family operations are becoming large businesses.

“These people have been around a long time and they are vertically integrated,” he said.

When one family company owns the orchards, packing plant, and distribution and sales organization, they can absorb costs more easily, Robison said. That increases the speed with which the industry evolves.

When considering his son’s future as a farmer, Robison is realistic.

“I think there is a 50-50 chance (he’ll retire as a farmer),” he said. “We’ve talked about that.”

Still a big player

Fryhover understands why people might think the apple industry had lost some of its luster. With fewer individual farmers, the direct, daily impact of the business might be lost on some.

“When you think of Washington, you think of Boeing and Microsoft and Amazon,” he said.

And although technology and manufacturing jobs may dominate the west side of the state, he said the apple industry continues to play a vital role in the state’s economy.

In 2015, the state’s apple industry was worth $2.04 billion. That’s 22 percent of the state’s total agricultural value, according to the United States Department of Agriculture. Nationally, the 2015 crop represented 59.9 percent of the country’s apple production.

A profit puzzle piece

Across the lake from Robison’s home near the small town of Manson, Phylis Gleasman has been growing apples since 1981. That’s when she moved with her husband back to the Chelan area and jumped into the apple business. Her husband died in 2005, and Gleasman farms her 60 or so acres with the help of her son, who also works as a school teacher.

Her orchards are high in the hills above the long, narrow lake, right at the edge of where apples can grow, she said. Nowadays those hills are increasingly dotted with housing developments.

“As the rural area disappears and becomes more urban, there are challenges,” she said.

Neighbors expect rural peace and quiet, and are unhappy when farm machinery makes noise, she said. One neighbor recently sued her, claiming that when she sprayed her orchards, the chemicals drifted onto their property. The lawsuit is ongoing, but to appease them, she built a 30-foot-tall barrier between the orchard and their property.

When Gleasman started farming, she was unusual – one of the few people who “didn’t inherit” a family business, she said.

“We started from scratch,” she said.

Things have changed since then. With the increased price and complexity of the apple business, Gleasman isn’t sure she could start out in the same manner today.

But she prides herself on adapting to those changes.

“You can’t look at this (like it’s) 20 years ago,” she said. “You have to look at this strictly as a business. You can’t just go out there and sit on a tractor with a piece of straw in your mouth.”

Now she’s constantly looking ahead, figuring out ways she can make her business more efficient, while simultaneously planting the kinds of apples consumers want. It’s a tricky balancing act.

When Gleasman and Robison started farming, the Washington apple industry was dominated by one variety, Red Delicious. Consumers’ tastes changed, however, fueled by the introduction of new, tastier varieties: Gala, Fuji, and Honeycrisp, to name only a few.

The varieties are good for discerning consumers, but makes the farmers’ jobs harder. Instead of relying on one, homogeneous crop, they have to plant multiple varieties, hoping that one or two will be popular when they start producing.

Trees themselves have to be ordered three years in advance. And once planted, they take about five years to reach full yield, Gleasman said.

“You just hope that dart hits the target, that you’re getting something profitable,” she said.

In mid-May, Gleasman is in the middle of planting a new section of orchard. She’s bought Red Delicious trees, but plans to graft the more profitable Sugar Bee apples onto the Red Delicious root stalk.

In addition to planting new varieties, farmers are also planting narrower rows to accommodate shorter, denser orchards. In the past there would be 300 to 400 apple trees per acre. Now, with changes in technology and horticulture, farmers can get 1,500 to 2,000 trees per acre, Fryhover said. And those trees are shorter, with fruit hanging just 8 feet off the ground.

Already, many orchards are harvesting fruit using motorized platforms, removing the need for tall and dangerous ladders.

The next big thing? Automated harvest. The technology is still in development, but many orchardists hope it will have widespread use in Washington within 10 years. Automating harvest would remove one of the industry’s biggest and most persistent challenges – labor costs.

“Yes, there is a lot of interest in it (automation),” Fryhover said. “The labor is just the tough, tough part.”

But, as with all innovations in the industry, automated harvest will cost money and take time to implement. For a robot to accurately and efficiently pick fruit, the orchard has to be uniform.

“So you have to have the orchard structure first when you talk about automation,” Fryhover said. “And that’s not cheap. You’re talking about $40,000 to $50,000 an acre to plant an orchard like this.”

‘If we play our cards right’

Gleasman’s operation is also a family affair. Her son, the school teacher, works nights, weekends and summers.

Touring her orchards, she greets her grandson, Luke Gleasman, who is driving a tractor while Jose Perez places trees in the furrowed earth. Lake Chelan glimmers in the distance.

“Hey, big buddy,” Gleasman says to Luke, who plays football at Carrol College in Montana and is home visiting for a few weeks.

Gleasman doesn’t worry much about the future. She thinks that as long as she continues to adapt and respond, there is a way for midsize farms to succeed.

“We are constantly reinvesting in our orchard to make sure it is farmed right and it has quality diversification,” she said.

And while Robison is more concerned than Gleasman, he also thinks there is a future.

It just won’t be easy.

“I know that us small farmers, if we play our cards right, there is always going to be room for us,” he said. “We can micromanage. We don’t have the money to make changes real fast, but we can micromanage what we have.”

QUINCY, Wash. – In the long light of a late fall afternoon, Ulises Perez Gonzalez hesitantly cuts a Costco cake. The 23-year-old Mexican farmworker’s hands, roughened from months of farm labor, are not accustomed to the delicate work.

About 15 Mexican workers watch Gonzalez. They’re celebrating an unlikely victory: a successful strike by foreign fieldworkers. On the cake, inscribed in icing are the words, “Sí se pudo.”

“Yes we did it.”

Most of these farmworkers came to the U.S. on a legal work visa from the small Mexican state of Nayarit. They went on a six-day strike in early September.

They demanded better working conditions. Better access to health care. Better food.

And they won.

Their six-day strike was one of several across Washington state during a turbulent year for labor relations in one of the country’s largest agricultural states. And it underscores Washington apple farmers’ growing reliance on legal foreign farm work.

In Washington, some labor groups are baffled by unrest, noting that they believe working conditions have never been better. And yet activists say the strikes are indicative of widespread abuse and structural deficiencies of the legal visa program. Those same labor activists see these strikes, particularly the Quincy one, as historic.

“These guys are the ones that started things,” said Mary Jo Ybarra-Vega, a social worker at the Quincy Community Health Center who assisted the strikers. “I kept telling them, know that you might not ever understand what you guys did, or what good could come from this, but know that this isn’t the end.”

A surge in H-2A workers

Although the legal farmworker program, called H-2A, started in 1986, the number of workers coming to the United States and Washington has surged in the last decade.

With the H-2A program growers can bring foreign-born laborers to the United States for specific work and time periods. The growers are required to provide transportation to and from the worker’s home country, and provide housing, medical care and basic food supplies during the work season. Additionally, they are expected to transport the workers back to his or her home country.

Despite the extra cost and complexity, the number of H-2A workers has more than tripled during the last five years. For instance, in 2010 there were 3,014 H-2A workers in Washington; in 2015 there were 11,844. In 2017, Washington farmers and growers requested about 18,500 H-2A workers.

Nationwide, the use of H-2A workers rose from 79,000 in 2010 to 140,000 in 2015, according to U.S. Department of Labor statistics. As of March, the U.S. Department of Labor had approved 69,272 H-2A applications.

“These H-2A programs, they are cumbersome. They are a lot of work. They are a lot of cost. And they are a lot of paperwork,” said Roger Pepperl, director of marketing for Stemilt Growers. “We dreaded them in the beginning but once we realized it was our only tool we embraced it.”

Pepperl said one thing most people don’t realize about the H-2A program is that companies have to advertise the jobs locally before they can ask for H-2A labor. What’s more, if a company employs H-2A workers they must pay all workers a minimum of $13.38 per hour.

“The fact that people think agriculture is trying to outsource work, it’s beyond ludicrous,” he said.

He added, “There is no labor.”

Activists say the nature of the program makes voicing concerns and complaints about working conditions a risky proposition. H-2A workers often don’t speak English, live far from town, know no one and depend on their employer for things as basic as transportation and toiletries. If they violate the terms of their contract, either by getting fired or leaving, their visa is no longer valid and their employer is obligated to report them to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

That’s why the strikes in Washington are a deviation from the norm.

“They (farmworkers) are very reluctant, as a rule, to raise any complaint,” said Michele Besso, an attorney with the Northwest Justice Project. “So when you have large numbers of them saying I can’t take it anymore, they clearly are feeling tremendous pressure.”

The Quincy strike

This was Ulises Perez Gonzalez’s second year working in the United States as an H-2A guest worker. Normally, the lanky 23-year-old is soft-spoken, he said through an interpreter. But this season he found his voice as the spokesman for the striking Quincy-area workers.

In Facebook live videos and face-to-face meetings with a foreman and the farm’s owner, Gonzalez was front and center.

The six-day strike started when three workers were summarily fired for not picking enough. And while that event was the flashpoint for the strike, the complaints had been building up for weeks.

When workers were hurt they were expected to walk back to their company-provided housing, Gonzalez said. The foreman was verbally abusive, swearing and mocking the H-2A workers.

On one occasion a worker fell from a ladder. The foreman’s response?

“Good thing the ladder didn’t break,” Gonzalez said.

But, in an encouraging sign, Gonzalez said, farm owner Keith Larson was open and responsive to their requests. After six days, the strike was resolved and things have gotten better, Gonzalez said.

“Ever since the incident they do pay a little more attention to us,” he said.

Activists, lawyers and health workers say this is one of the few, if not the first, times in the United States that a group of H-2A workers has gone on strike and had demands met. In fact, this year there have been a number of strikes and work stoppages across the state.

Earlier in the summer, workers went on strike after a worker died at a berry farm near Sumas, Washington. Those workers were fired and returned to Mexico. Gonzalez and his co-workers went on strike in Quincy and workers near Kennewick, Washington, walked away from the fields weeks before harvest finished in late October.

Besso believes that pressure to pick faster and work harder has pushed some workers to strike, or leave the country early. Based on what she’s heard from her clients, the owners often feel that the expense of the H-2A program demands faster, more efficient work. At the same time the workers are, per their H-2A agreement, unable to leave the farm they’re contracted with and get another job somewhere else.

“They don’t want to be protesting,” Besso said. “They want to work. They want to make money to send money home to their families. If they had options, if they had the option to move to a different farm, they would totally do that.”

Unlike some, Besso doesn’t believe the H-2A program is fundamentally a bad program. But she does believe it needs better oversight and enforcement of provisions designed to protect workers.

“It does work for some workers and some employers,” she said. “I think for some H-2A workers they can come up and they earn a decent wage and it works for them.”

Some farmworker activists and organizations take a harder line. They believe that the H-2A program is exploitative and should be scrapped.

“They have no transportation,” said Rosalinda Guillen, executive director of Community to Community Development, a farmworker advocacy group in Washington. “They don’t know anyone in the community and the employer hangs on to their visa. It’s like a prison. This is normal. This is legal.”

Fieldworkers whom Guillen talks to are “exhausted,” she said. One of the biggest complaints that Community to Community receives is that farmworkers don’t get breaks during the workday.

Larger advocacy organizations also believe that the program is exploitative.

“We believe that the H-2A program is a deeply and inherently flawed program,” said Adrienne DerVartanian, immigration and labor director for Farmworker Justice.

The national nonprofit advocates for migrant and seasonal farmworkers. She said H-2A workers often are made to pay recruitment fees, a practice banned under the program. Additionally, there is no path for workers to earn citizenship, or even apply for a green card.

DerVartanian said the structure of the H-2A program pushes employers to favor H-2A workers at the expense of the domestic workforce.

And finally, she said, there is a human toll. Many H-2A workers come to the United States for months at a time, some even approaching a year. For most that means long periods of time away from their homes and families.

“Workers generally are here on their own and they are separated from their families,” she said.

WAFLA response

In 2006, fruit across Washington state rotted on the trees. Growers were unable to find enough workers to pick the waiting fruit, said Dan Fazio, executive director and CEO of the WA Farm Labor Association.

“By 2012, we had a much larger crop than 2006, the largest crop ever, and we were able to get the entire crop off due to the legal worker program,” Fazio said in an email.

WAFLA provides human resources training for growers and helps bring H-2A workers to the state. This year, Fazio said, WAFLA brought 10,000 H-2A workers to 200 Washington farmers.

As for this year’s strikes, Fazio points out that roughly 100 workers were involved out of the more than 15,000 H-2A workers statewide. Fazio believes that there may be issues with individual supervisors, and that “new regulations” pressure employers to increase productivity, which could lead to more stressful working conditions in some cases. The program and the work is not for everyone, he said.

And the nature of the H-2A program makes the strikes more visible and public, he said.

“We have had similar types of unrest before H-2A, but the legal worker program brings everything out in the open, because workers have a contract and the right to complain,” he said in an email. “In addition, groups who oppose the legal worker program are using social media to promote unrest.”

As for accusations that the H-2A program is fundamentally flawed and exploitative, Fazio doesn’t agree. The H-2A program benefits everyone, he said. Even growers who don’t use H-2A workers have a larger pool of local workers to draw from at the end of the day.

Fazio pointed out that most of the program’s most vocal critics are organizations that represent undocumented workers and workers afraid of being displaced by the legal work program.

“Who is being abused?” Fazio asks in an email. “The guy who pays a coyote, walks across the desert, sleeps in his car and travels from job to job with the minimum wage as his only guarantee? Or the person who has a contract, a guaranteed wage that is 23 percent higher than minimum, housing, transportation and legal presence?”

Good or bad, the system is changing

The increased numbers of H-2A workers is changing the farm labor system.

Ybarra-Vega believes that the H-2A program has given farmworkers the legal footing necessary to strike and publicly protest working conditions. She points to the Washington strikes as an example of that.

“These guys, they had options,” she said. “I think they feel empowered because they have legal documentation to say this isn’t right.”

Others are less sure the changes are a good thing. One of Community to Community founder Guillen’s fears is that the cost of the H-2A program will drive smaller farms out of business.

“The family farming system in the U.S. is disappearing,” Guillen said. “The family farmers are disappearing.”

About 10 years ago, there were 4,000 independent apple growers in Washington. In 2017, there were 1,450.

For farmworkers, the disappearance of small growers and farmers is a bad thing, Guillen said.

“The big farms that are here have never wanted to talk to representatives of workers or advocates or unions,” she said. “The bigger they are the harder it is to communicate with them.”

Driving through the fields west of Quincy, Ybarra-Vega said she’s seen the same thing. She points out the field owned by bigger companies, Stemilt, McDougall & Sons and others.

“Some of these big companies, we’ve never had a phone call. Ever,” she said. “And I’ve been here for 15 years.”

Phyllis Gleasman, owner of a small orchard in the hills above Lake Chelan, said the wider implementation of the H-2A program is too expensive for her to use. But she doesn’t need it, largely because her long-term foreman has a good recruiting network and she built worker housing several years ago.

“The labor is getting critical to our area,” she said. “One reason being that the laborers are able to get more by working construction. We’re right in the middle of a huge construction boom. And these guys can go get twice the monies working construction than they can on the farm.”

Another area where the H-2A program appears to be affecting agriculture is wages. Besso and others have heard reports of the H-2A program artificially depressing wages. Although growers pay more than minimum wage, that rate is an average hourly rate and not necessarily reflective of the particular working conditions or time. DerVartanian said she’s heard stories of domestic workers being turned away from farms when they requested more money.

“It’s totally changing,” Besso said. “It’s changing our system, but it’s really hard to know how without some good research (about) all the ways it’s changing things.”

Strong like a tree

With the harvest season nearly over, the Quincy H-2A workers who went on strike are looking forward to going home. Some have been in the U.S. nearly 10 months. They miss their wives, children and friends. They’re tired of living in trailers surrounded by apple orchards.

But they’ll be back, one way or another.

As if to illustrate that point, Gonzalez, the spokesman for the group’s bargaining efforts, pulls the sleeves of his shirt up to show a tattoo penned onto the flesh of his left forearm. It’s a picture of a tree.

He said, “For as much as life throws at you, you have to be strong like a tree.”

Tyler Tjomsland contributed to this report.

For Washington apples, the North American Free Trade Agreement has been a good deal.

The agreement has allowed apples grown in Central Washington to travel, unfettered and untaxed, down to Mexico and up to Canada.

Exports to the two countries have created more than 4,000 jobs and the international exposure has boosted Washington’s reputation as the apple state.

“These kind of agreements give us a leg up,” said Rebecca Lyons, international marketing director for the Washington State Apple Commission. “You know, one of the challenges we have here is we are a higher-cost producer and our competitors in many of these markets are not.”

Lyons said prior to NAFTA’s implementation in 1994, Washington exported some apples to Mexico and Canada, but high tariffs made it a costly endeavor.

Now, between 7 and 9 percent of Washington’s apple crop goes to Mexico.

“We have full access. There are no duties,” said Todd Fryhover, the president of the Washington apple commission. “It’s a year-round market. It really is perfect the way that it is.”

And the benefit isn’t limited to apples.

Mark Powers, the president of the Northwest Horticultural Council, said 20 percent of the pear crop and 15 percent of the apple crop go to Mexico or Canada. The export business alone generates about $500 million per year, he said.

Any withdrawal from NAFTA would shake the Washington Apple industry to its core.

In May, President Donald Trump announced plans to renegotiate the deal, seemingly stepping back from campaign promises to withdraw the United States completely from the agreement.

During the campaign, Trump called the deal “the worst trade deal in the history of the world.”

Nationally, farmers and farmer associations expressed concern at the potential renegotiation. Powers, however, said he is not worried.

“I think that there is room for renegotiation and improvement,” he said.

However, any changes need to keep agriculture’s best interest in mind. Especially important, he said, is to not impose any tariffs on Mexican goods, which could start a trade war.

Prior to NAFTA, Powers said, there was a 20 percent tariff on any Washington tree fruit going to Mexico. The removal of that cost has led to a 70 percent increase in exports.

“I know there are concerns related to manufacturing goods and that kind of thing,” Powers said.

He hopes that whatever is put in place to protect manufacturing interests doesn’t “harm agriculture interests.”

Since 1994, annual farm exports to Mexico have increased five-fold to about $18 billion. Mexico is the No. 3 market for U.S. agriculture.

Apple growers in Washington stood to benefit from the Trans Pacific Partnership, so when Trump withdrew the U.S. from the deal in January, Powers said it was a “disappointment.”

It was particularly damaging to the effort to open up the Vietnam apple market, he said. Still, Washington already has decent access to Asian markets, although there are tariffs.

And Washington’s focus on Asia won’t change.

“That’s the growth area in this world,” Powers said. “Our industry is focused in Asia and the growing middle class.”

Dave Robison, a mid-size apple farmer said he didn’t notice a huge change when NAFTA went into affect in 1994. He hopes Trump reduces regulations on agriculture, but for the most part, he said, he doesn’t pay too much attention to politics.

“As a full-time farmer, I’m pretty far removed,” he said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

A warm fall and new planting technologies gave Washington apple growers a larger harvest than anticipated this season.

In August, the Washington State Tree Fruit Association estimated the state would produce 131 million 40-pound boxes of fresh apples. That number was based on what growers had planted pre-harvest. By Oct. 1, that estimate had grown to 140 million, after the state’s Golden Delicious, Gala and Honeycrisp crops were harvested.

Todd Fryhover, president of the Washington Apple Commission, believes the higher than anticipated yield is due to new planting technologies leading to greater per-acre yields.

“I think we as an industry don’t really have a way to anticipate the volume on these new blocks,” he said.

Fryhover believes that almost all Washington growers will wrap up harvest within two weeks.

The modern apple orchard has narrower rows to accommodate shorter, denser orchards. In the past, there might be 300 to 400 apple trees per acre. Now, with changes in technology and horticulture, farmers can get 1,500 to 2,000 trees per acre, Fryhover said.

As farmers plant these new, more efficient rows, there is an adjustment period. The first two years after the trees are planted, they won’t produce any fruit for harvest. By year three, they will produce some. But between years three and four, the trees’ production can jump significantly.

“It could easily double between year three and year four,” Fryhover said.

Fryhover believes that’s the “major component” in 2017’s larger-than-expected harvest.

The other contributing factor was a warm September and October.

“The weather in September and October was fantastic,” Fryhover said.

That weather gave the state’s apples a final boost going into the fall harvest.

The international market also appears promising for Washington growers, Fryhover said. Europe’s crop is expected to be down 20 percent after a cold spring and hailstorms. Mexico’s crop is expected to be down 30 percent and Canada’s is down by 5 percent.

That means there will be fewer apples competing for export customers. And, China, the world’s largest apple grower, is still unable to export to India, one of Washington’s top customers.

“India in the last five years has really come on with some serious volume,” Fryhover said.

And finally, a cool spring meant Washington’s apples didn’t grow as large as in years past. That’s a good thing, Fryhover said, because international customers tend to like smaller apples.

And while President Donald Trump’s administration continues to debate the North American Free Trade Agreement, Fryhover said any changes that do happen likely won’t affect the 2017 export crop.

“If there are changes, and quite honestly we hope that there are not, it probably will be the 2018 crop,” he said.

Every year, thousands of hives dot Washington’s apple orchards. The bees inside pollinate the state’s apple trees. Apple farmers, for the most part, rent the bees, said Dave Robison, an apple farmer near Chelan.

For every acre of apple orchard, farmers need one hive, Robison said. The hives stay in the fields for a week or two. The cost? Between $50 and $60.

“They bring them in and set them at night,” Robison said.

Robison works with an apiarist out of California. The bees Robison rents generally have just come from the almond fields of California.

After the bees are packed up and shipped off to their new assignment, Robison said you don’t want to be around. Leftover bees, separated from their colonies, aren’t happy.

Planting a modern apple orchard is expensive work costing between $40,000 and $50,000 per acre. What’s more, the kinds of apples people want to eat can change. That means an orchard planted this year might not be that valuable by the time it has reached full maturity five years later.

One way apple farmers in Washington can adapt to changing tastes? Grafting. It’s an ancient process that melds two different types of apple trees together. Simply put, the stem of one variety’s leaf buds are inserted into the stalk of the tree.

Grafting isn’t cheap – it costs about $1,000 per acre. But it’s cheaper than replanting, and it’s one way for farmers to adapt relatively quickly to changing markets.

The apple was first domesticated in southern Kazakhstan about 4,000 years ago.

The fruit has played heavily into art and literature in various cultures. However, apples do not appear in the Old Testament’s Book of Genesis. In the original Adam and Eve story, the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil is an unspecified fruit tree.

Scholars believe the apple became the forbidden fruit due to a pun. The Latin word malus, when used as an adjective means evil or bad. Used as a noun? It means apple.

In the fourth century A.D., a scripture scholar translated the Hebrew Bible into Latin. While translating the “Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil” the pun was added and has since slipped into popular culture, according to an article from National Public Radio.

The first apple tree in Washington was planted in 1826 in Vancouver. The Hudson Bay Co. brought the seed, according to a brief history written by Fred L. Overley for Washington State University.

By 1889, the first commercial orchards were established, according to the Washington Apple Commission.

In the early years, there were many orchards near and in Spokane. According to Overley’s account there were 5,000 acres in Eastern Washington at the peak of production around 1925.

The Washington Apple Commission was established in 1937 and is among the oldest commodity commissions in the United States.