Some parts of the agricultural sector have experienced hard times lately, but in terms of the apple industry things aren’t that bad, according to Scotian Gold Cooperative Ltd. In spite of challenges faced by the entire sector, the apple industry in the Annapolis Valley still serves as the basis for many successful farms, and is at the core of Scotian Gold’s success.

In fact, as the final numbers are confirmed for last year, Scotian Gold announced last week that the 2007 apple crop was the largest to come through the doors of the Coldbrook-based co-op in its 50-year history. In an era when many believe the apple industry has decreased in size, Scotian Gold has expanded from handling slightly more than 20,000 bins of fruit (14 million pounds) in 1993 to over 50,000 bins (35 million pounds) in 2007.

“It’s not a surprise. We saw it coming,” says Larry Lutz, Scotian Gold’s Vice-President of Agriculltural Services. “We normally do predictions for 10 years based on plantings, and we’ve planted a lot of young orchards over the past 10 years.” As a lot of older orchards have been removed – which Lutz said, “is what people see” – they have been replaced with “new strains of a lot of popular varieties.”

Lutz noted that while orchard acreages have decreased steadily since World War II, “we’ve reached the point where plantings are equaling removals and even outdistancing them. We’ve gone past the bottom of the curve and are now on our way back up.”

Personally, he said he likes to see the old stock replaced with new, which tends to help overall productivity as well as satisfy the tastes of increasingly fussy consumers. “The only negative,” he said, “is the new orchards that are being planted produce very few juice apples. Our total output isn’t any less, but the apples are being used for different purposes. There’s less and less juice and more and more fresh all the time.”

Lutz, who is a co-op member-grower as well as liaison between Scotian Gold and its approximately 30 members, said while the actual acreage of apples in the Valley has declined, “intensive production practices have enabled growers to produce more fresh fruit per acre.” This, in turn, has allowed – or actually forced – the co-operative to continue to expand its storage and packing capabilities. With the forecast of a large crop in 2007, Scotian Gold fast-tracked its plan to construct additional Controlled Atmosphere Storage facilities originally planned to be completed later this year.

Technology and consumer tastes, Lutz said, change rapidly. Today’s consumers want firm, crisp Valley apples year-round, not just for a few weeks in the fall. To make this possible, Scotian Gold has embarked on a regular program of building the most up-to-date storages possible, and has continued to do so right up to this fall when new concrete tilt-up storage was completed.

The new construction adds an additional 5,700 bins of capacity, allowing Scotian Gold to handle 52,000 bins of fruit this fall in controlled atmosphere and common refrigerated storage.

Lutz termed the size of the 2007 apple crop “good news for our entire industry,” which “went through some hard times after WWII, and again in the 1980s. Growers who didn’t change their production systems and plant new orchards are still having a hard time, but those who have changed with the times are actually doing quite well.”