CENTREVILLE, N.S. – The pork and cattle industries may be suffering, but the good news is apple growers are expecting an average crop of good quality.
The Cortland and Jonagold varieties didn’t fair as well in the damp weather, but the increasingly popular Honeycrisp has been closing the gap. “Honeycrisp is making apples a little more attractive to people inside and outside of Nova Scotia,” Dela Erith, executive director of the Nova Scotia Fruit Growers’ Association, was reported as saying by Halifax’s Chronicle Herald. “We might be looking at displacing more of the imports and doing a little more exporting.” Currently Nova Scotia apples are sold to local markets and exported to Europe, the U.S., parts of the Caribbean, other Canadian provinces and local pie makers.
Now in the fourth year of a five-year government-subsidized orchard replacement program, Nova Scotia farmers are replacing older apple varieties with the Honeycrisp, and now the newest brand, SweeTango, is being grown. “I think we should be pretty proud of our growers and their ability to…take the risk, because it’s a big risk for them to replant trees…and they’re doing it,” said Erith.
