For the huge West Coast orchards, this isn’t much of a problem. But on the East Coast, which has smaller orchards and wet weather that makes organic growing impossible, the challenge is more acute. “There’s a lot of concentration of apple growing in the one place [Washington], and that makes it easier for those growers to supply big retailers,” said Susan Futrell, author of “Good Apples: Behind Every Bite” and director of marketing at Red Tomato, a Massachusetts nonprofit distributor for a network of more than 40 wholesale growers. “Decisions about what varieties to carry are getting made by fewer and fewer people and further away from where people are buying the apples.”

Source: Los Angeles Times November 08, 2018 22:41 UTC