Due to the regularly difficult weather conditions in spring and summer, the low harvest volumes are no surprise. However, dessert fruit also has to contend with quality losses, and in the case of cider fruit, surplus residual loads still have to be reduced, according to a report from the Agricultural Information Service (Landwirtschaftliche Informationsdienst).
The fruit harvests turn out differently every year depending on the weather. Harvest estimates are used to predict the volumes to be expected. A cold spring with numerous frosty nights, a rainy summer and the hail storms - among other things -have led to a sobering summer fruit season balance, the Swiss Fruit Association (SOV) announced at the beginning of October. While the cherry harvest was still respectable at around 1,500 tons, 72 percent of the five-year average, there was a different picture for plums and apricots. According to the SOV, yields for plums, at 1,300 tons, were only 40 percent of the five-year average, and for apricots, at 2,200 tons, only 35 percent.
Pome fruit has more "bugs" than usual this year, due to the weather. (ji)
Bad years are more forgiving
Interestingly, the SOV wouldn't necessarily have get complaints and claims this year than in other years, even though fruit quality is somewhat worse. "As there are no better goods available at all, our customers apparently are more forgiving," speculates Roger Käslin. Those who have a choice are automatically more selective. Those who don't, not so much.
Worse years also boost rural sales, Roger Käslin tells us: "We have observed that in good dessert fruit years, rural sales are not so good. When there's a bad fruit year, they go up." In the exceedingly good fruit year of 2018, for example, there was simply more than enough produce available. Availability is clearly and more directly visible in the countryside with fully-covered trees, and private parties gave away their surplus fruit. In the city, availability is less apparent, so there is less fluctuation there.