Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/215151
Hort Shows 2013 "It's not what I've done, it's what I haven't done." PHOTO BY GERALDINE WARNER —Steve Zediker not in how it uses labor. Workers are still, for the most part, climbing ladders and carrying heavy picking bags around. "What we've come to realize is there's a finite amount of labor and a finite amount of land, and we have to find ways to make them both more efficient," he said. "Just look at the auto industry. When you have a repetitive task, you need to develop a machine to do it and use people for the thinking processes." Zediker hopes to prune, thin, and harvest mechanically, though it might not be 100 percent mechanized at first. "I think if we can get some mechanical aids, we can drive our costs of labor down enough that we can be competitive," he said. "That's the thing that people are really looking at now, partly because we've had the labor crunches in the last few years. We finally said we don't need to make these people do repetitive tasks and carry all this weight any more. Let's find a way of making life easier for everybody." He's looking into mechanical pruning machines used by the grape industry in California that he could use, not to hedge trees, but to prune horizontal channels in the fruiting wall to improve light penetration. Workers will only need to touch up the pruning or thinning. He envisions that the canopy will have defined layers, and the trees will have short limbs in the bottom and longer limbs in the top where light penetration is greater. "We're going to need to have more capital for equipment," he said, "But the great thing is once you own it, and the more you utilize it, the lower the cost per acre." Zediker and his wife, Ruth, have three children. Son Adam, 27, who is an area manager for Washington Fruit and Produce Company, challenges him and gets him excited about trying new things in his orchard. When he was his son's age, a target yield might have been 40 bins per acre, he recalled. "We thought, 'If you can do that, man, you've got it made.' We know, as an industry, we've pretty much gotten there, and we haven't got it made." Now, Adam tells him, "I think maybe, Dad, you should be looking at 80 bins to the acre as an average and have a few years that are 100." The question is, how do you get there, and Zediker is looking forward to hearing Dr. Terence Robinson from Cornell University, New York, talk about apple and pear orchards of the future during this year's annual Hort meeting. Traditionally, the Hort president develops the program theme, and Zediker already has one in mind for next year—Change: Promoting ideas to improve our future. "There's one reason why people go to the Hort convention—they're looking for something," he said. "And they're looking for something because they're not satisfied with something about their operation. They're not satisfied with how their trees are growing, not satisfied with the marketing, not satisfied with the financial side. What they have is not good enough, so they're looking for ideas. "If you're not satisfied with your operation, you should be attending the Hort show," he said, noting that those who are satisfied and don't see a need to change will soon start going backwards. "Change is inevitable." • www.goodfruit.com GOOD FRUIT GROWER DECEMBER 2013 11