Exact final table grape volume numbers are always difficult to nail down as they continue to trickle in beyond year-end.  Harvest often continues as one year runs out and is replaced by a new year and this year appears to be no different. Month-to-month recordkeeping had the 2021 crop tracking close to 2020 in which volume ended up at 101.1 19-pound boxes.

 “2021 was a challenging year for all the obvious reasons, particularly with exports because of the shipping and port-related issues,” said Kathleen Nave, president of the California Table Grape Commission.

“Shipping costs increased along with other expenses involving supply chain issues.  And, of course, if you’re shipping less for export, then more fruit needs to be shipped to the domestic market.  On the plus side, it does appear that the industry was able to successfully ship more fruit domestically within the U.S. and Canada.

“The U.S. is a good market for California grapes,” she said, “and even better this season than in recent years in terms of both demand and price.”

Earlier this year, the USDA gave that effort a big bump by announcing it would commit to purchase $30 million in U.S.-grown table grapes this year to distribute to food banks and other food programs.

Although expectations are that the export market will continue to be challenging because of yet-to-be-resolved shipping issues, Nave says the table grape industry is doing a work-around.  “We’re focusing on the demand in the domestic market, volume and value-wise.  We’re calling it the North American market including the U.S., Canada, and Mexico.  We remain flexible, able to move quickly whenever and wherever there are opportunities.”

That kind of fluidity was noted recently in “Vision Fruticola” magazine when California global fruit breeder Sun World (a 40+-year-old firm that has filed more than 50 table grape patents) spoke to the future of mature growing regions.

Profound transformation

President David Marguleas said: “Our industry is undergoing a profound and dramatic transformation driven by varietal conversion as well as several technological advances facilitating labor and supply chain efficiencies and end-product enhancements.  While traditional markets for most of the last half century have been relatively constant, we see them becoming more fluid and opportunistic.  It’s disruptive, but it creates opportunities for the grower-shipped community.”

In the 2022 growing year, Nave said: “For California growers of all commodities, it will be challenging.  The price that table grape growers get for product needs to increase because their costs continue to increase, so that’s another challenge to add into the mix.  Although our ability to sell more fruit in the domestic market at better prices in a lot of cases is a good positive sign for the future.”

Expectations are that mechanization and automation will play an important part in increasing the efficiency of vineyard operations with a goal of reducing costs.

A recent time and motion study conducted on harvest activities is helping the industry understand where and how much time is spent on picking and packing tasks.  A second study on in-house packing is currently underway with a goal of understanding how labor is distributed across tasks and facilities and identifying potential areas of using machinery instead of humans.

Autonomous carts are being tested to aid in vineyard movement of freshly-harvested grapes as well as having sensors to count clusters and detect ripe berries — and robotics to pick those ripe berry clusters without damaging the fruit.

“These developments are critically important,” said Nave.  “There are a lot of grower-shippers in the table grape industry experimenting on their own, investing and innovating.  There’s a real focus on identifying things that will make a difference to growers through this R&D development.  Replacing the old-fashioned wheelbarrow used by harvest workers with an automated cart is a step in that direction.”