Harvest Update With Christopher  Mertz

Harvest Update With Christopher Mertz

Susan Allen
Susan Allen
I’m Susan Allen. If you are noticing a lot of pumpkins heading down the highway, it’s harvest time in Washington State, and I was able to catch up with Christopher Mertz the Regional Director of the USDA and the NATIONAL AGRICULTURAL STATISTICS SERVICE known as NASS to ask him to be kind enough to give us a harvest update,

 

 

MERTZ: There is plenty going on in the state of Washington regarding harvest. From our most recent report for the week ending September 25, counties are reporting apples and pears, and plums crops are being harvested for the fruit crops. For the potato crop at this point, 54% of the crop has been harvested compared to 61 % last year’s last year. Onions, so far 64 % of the crop has been harvested compared to 83 % last year. Regarding field corn harvested for grain 6% has been harvested by the end of the week compared to 12 % last year. Field corn that is going to be harvest for silage, 58% has been harvest this year compared to 63 percent last year,

 

Given our warm spring, growers across the board thought they would have an early harvest, but we are actually trending quite normally, especially corn.

 

MERTZ: Based on those statistics last year’s harvest was a little early, so this year we are getting closer to what is normal in that five-year average.

 

We had several counties report their first frost last week while rains helped resupply cranberry crop ponds for wet harvest.

 

 

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