One of the major fruit growers/packers in the US is called Stemilt and it was started 60 years ago by Tom Mathison in Wenatchee, Washington. It is now run by his grandsons, West and Tate Mathison, and son, Kyle Mathison. The fruit industry in general and particularly the apple industry has gone through some major changes and has been improved through a number of innovations over those six decades. Today, the fresh fruit that is made available by Stemilt and other such companies is one of the healthiest and most affordable components of our food supply. Based on data posted by Statista, US per capita consumption of fresh apples has been in the 15-20 lb. range since 2000 while per capita consumption of pears has declined slightly from 3 to 2.6 lb.
The history of this fruit company actually reaches back to 1893 when the Mathison family started homesteading in Washington. In 1914 the family planted a 10-acre orchard of apples, pears and cherries. Tom Mathison was of the third generation and had to take over the farm at the age of 21 soon after returning from WWII because his father died tragically in a farm accident. The farm was struggling financially because the industry’s cooperative storage/marketing/shipping system was not successfully maintaining quality to the consumer level market, so the returns they were getting were not sufficient to keep the farm going. After a particularly disappointing return on a cherry crop in 1958, Mathison started doing his own post-harvest handling and packing so that higher quality fruit could be delivered to retail, and that dramatically increased demand. In 1964 Tom founded Stemilt Growers in order to have full control over the storage, shipping and marketing of their fruit.
When Stemilt became an independent packer and shipper it started building a strong reputation for quality. Stemilt now handles the fruit from 20,000 acres in 2 states which are a combination of owned land, land owned by others and run by a farm management company, and acreage operated by other local growers. The company handles apples, cherries, pears and stone fruits.
Other Stemilt Branded Fruits: Happi Pears and Half-Mile Closer to the Moon Cherries
The fruit industry, and particularly the apple industry, has gone through many dramatic changes over the six decades that Stemilt has been a player.
Apples Become a Year-Round Product
With the introduction of Controlled Atmosphere Storage technology in the 1960s, apples went from a seasonal to a year-round offering. Apple storage quality also improved starting 20 years ago with the introduction of SmartFresh™ storage technology. The shift to constant supply put apples in competition with a tropical crop like bananas and the industry chose to focus on a few apple varieties and particularly on Red Delicious as the archetypal variety.
The Alar Scare
Then in 1989 the apple industry was hit with the notorious “Alar Scare” when the environmental group NRDC asserted that a chemical plant growth regulator used on apples and some other crops would generate a highly carcinogenic breakdown product that represented a huge risk to consumers. This message was dramatically amplified by the media. In time that claim was debunked, but not before the apple industry was hit with around $100 million in lost revenue. Many orchards went out of business, and it was a challenging time for Stemilt.
The Variety Explosion
Modern American consumers have many more choices of apple varieties than they did in the past
One side effect of the Alar-driven market crash was that the surviving players abandoned the industry’s earlier limited variety strategy and began to grow additional varieties which became an axis of healthy competition between packers and shippers. Interestingly, retailers found that it was worth allotting the shelf space for several different kinds of apples because consumers had different favorite varieties and were more likely to buy if they were available. Traditional varieties (e.g. Red and Golden Delicious, Jonathan, etc.) are generic, but packer/shipper/marketers strive to have their own proprietary varieties and that is effectively their “consumer brand” in the market.
“Rave” is one of Stemilt’s proprietary varieties
Stemilt has exclusive rights to the Rave® variety (they also have brands like Lil Snappers®, Happi Pear® and the Half Mile Closer to the Moon® cherries). The company further has a grower and packer license to Cosmic Crisp, along with other Washington shippers. Overall, the identity of the shipper/packer is a trade level brand and often the retail chain wants to have fruit packed under a private label. Thus, with very limited ability to put the company name in front of consumers, Tom Mathison had an interesting way to describe Stemilt’s overall, quality-based marketing strategy: “the job of each piece of fruit is to sell the next one.”
Orchard “Architecture” Has Changed
Apple orchards used to be grown with large trees and ladders were needed for harvesting
There has been another major transition in the fruit industry that has been of great benefit for growers like Stemilt. Fruit trees including apples were quite large and were typically planted every 10-20 feet in rows 15-25 feet apart. Trees and vines have been grown on rootstocks for centuries because the traits needed to grow strong, healthy roots can be combined with a desirable fruiting variety that is grafted on top. Starting in Europe in the 1950s a new class of “dwarfing rootstocks” were developed and the resulting grafted orchard has trees that can be maintained at a height of 5-8 feet and grown every 10-15 feet apart in rows just wide enough to allow tractors and other equipment to pass.
Modern apple orchards utilize dwarfing rootstocks to grow short stature trees at high density. They … [+]
These are known as “high density” and/or “short stature” orchards. This has several advantages, the main one being that harvesting no longer requires the pickers to climb ladders, which speeds up the process and makes it far safer. The other advantage is that instead of taking at least 5 years for a new planting to start bearing fruit, a grower needing to replant or wanting to put in a new variety can start harvesting the third year after planting. The cost of more trees is offset by the quicker return on the investment.
Dealing With Labor Challenges
Tree fruit crops require a good deal of hand labor and the political controversy around immigration policy has compromised the functionality of the H2A system needed to supply that labor. In order to deal with this challenge, Stemilt is proudly part of CiertoGlobal.Org, which strives to provide workers with training, housing and a $20/hour guaranteed wage. This relationship is appreciated by guest workers and Stemilt has a 95% return rate of workers who choose to come to their orchards each season.