Extreme weather putting severe pressure on Dutch apple, pear harvests

The apple and pear picking season is about to start, and fruit cultivators are anything but positive about the outlook. The extreme weather is putting severe pressure on the local harvests, Ron Mulders, chairman of the Dutch Fruit Growers Organization (NFO), told AD.

The yield of apples and pears will again be lower this year, Mulders said. Fruit growers expect the second-smallest apple harvest of the past decade. “And although the pears will increase slightly compared to last year, the yield will still be far below average.”

Fruit grower Gerard Tetteroo’s main problem was all the recent hail storms. “The quality is not what we are used to because we have had a lot of hail,” he told AD. The hail often results in dents and ugly spots on the fruit. Tetteroo hopes that customers will be a bit more forgiving about that this year. If not, the bruised apples will become sauce or juice. “Only, the growers often earn less from that.”

Marc André de la Porte, fruit grower and NOF vice-chairman, also struggles with hail damage. “It varies from light damage to completely hail-covered,” he said. “ Sometimes you have a plot with 20 to 25 percent damage. But you also see plots with 80 percent damage.” The hail damage doesn’t affect the nutritional value, but customers attach great value to their apples and pears looking pretty.

“Climate change is a huge problem for fruit cultivation,” NFO chairman Mulders said. “A few years ago, we might have thought it wouldn’t be too bad, but several entrepreneurs are really suffering from it now.”

It’s not only damaged and smaller crops; the erratic nature of the weather also means that sometimes, fruit production actually skyrockets. Mulders mentioned pears from Italy as an example. “There, the harvest has increased by 220 percent compared to last year. Because the year before, there was a total crop failure.” But customers want a steady supply, and now Italian pear cultivators are stuck with tons of pears that nobody wants.

“We can’t have climate deniers anymore,” Mulders said. “Harvest security is now an issue.”