Spring is the new summer for stone fruit crops
When you're shopping for fruit this week, don't be surprised if you see peaches and cherries. Spring is the new summer for traditional hot-weather crops such as stone fruit.
According to industry organizations in California, this year is among the earliest seasons on record. That means Canada, which is California's top export market, has been receiving stone fruit for weeks already.
Usually, the season for fruits like cherries and plums is awfully short. Peaches, at least until recently, had a tightly concentrated season that seemed to last only a matter of weeks.
Barry Bedwell, the president of the California Fresh Fruit Association, said this has been an unprecedented year, with California farmers harvesting summer fruit in April.
Some of that fruit has hit Canadian produce stands weeks earlier than usual.
"We had a mild winter, a warmer spring, we had earlier maturities," he explained. "And you know the volumes have picked up at a quicker pace than we've seen historically."
But Bedwell isn't ready to attribute this shift in growing seasons to climate change … yet.
"There is not a true consensus out there, but clearly we've had some weather in recent years that has indicated a change from historical norms," he said.
"What has also changed over the years is an evolvement of varieties in stone fruit. That may have as much to do with the appearance of volume growing at a particular time as opposed to true impacts of only weather."
Bedwell said that over the past several decades, the industry has been developing and breeding new stone fruit varieties. But that research and development hasn't been focused on July and August harvests. Instead, the focus has been on what Bedwell considers "under-served" parts of the year.
In other words, if there are no peaches and cherries available in April and May, R&D folks are hard at work trying to breed varieties for that time of year. Combine that effort with changing weather patterns, and you get summer fruit in the spring.
Meanwhile, as the fruit industry makes efforts to give us consistent access to certain fruits for longer periods of time, they're also trying to make things taste better.
"In the past, we were looking at the development of varieties that met certain time frames," he said.
"I think there has been a change and attitudes now are focused in on making sure that eating qualities of certain fruits are paramount. It doesn't do you much good just to come up with a product if the consumer is not going to be satisfied with that."
