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Mark
Longstroth
Mark Longstroth is the District Educator for Horticulture & Marketing at the Michigan State Extension in Paw Paw, Michigan. He is knowledgeable in both tree and small fruit culture in Michigan.
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In
[19]69, the first planting of dwarf, truly dwarf fruit trees, was made here
in
About
two-thirds of
Here
in
There
are people who – essentially, usually berry growers, blueberry growers or
raspberry growers – [who] are planting currants and gooseberries now.
They’re very small growers because, essentially, you have to find
the market and usually when you find the market, they’ll pay an awful lot
of money for gooseberries. They’re
very hard to find. Currants and
gooseberries are native to
We see more and more u-pick farms or farm markets, roadside markets, and those people like a real mix of stuff. You want asparagus so that somebody can come by in the springtime and you can sell them asparagus, and then strawberries. You want a different piece of produce coming in all summer long so that once they start coming, there’s always another reason for them to come back.
The small fruit
grower is disappearing. The
small farm is disappearing, because the profit margin is so low.
So you see smart people getting out of the business.
In general, you probably need eight hundred acres in order to
generate enough income for you to live in a style that most people would
like to live in. What’s
happened in agriculture is that the profit margin has shrunk because the
amount of money they receive has stayed the same since the [19]60s and
[19]70s, but their costs have all doubled.
They just can’t produce enough profit to maintain themselves.
We[‘ve] had an awful lot of apple orchards in
There’ll
be a great shake-out in the fruit industry, [in] my opinion, where we’ll
see the disappearance of the small grower [who] grows for the wholesale
trade. You’ll see large
growers, large corporate farms, or large family farms that grow for the
wholesale trade. The small
growers will have to focus on roadside markets, what we call “agritainment,”
where the person has something for the whole family to do and keep them on
the farm whether it be a haunted house, a corn maze, or pick-your-own apples
or blueberries. Something to get
that person to come back time after time, and spend money on the farm and
stay on the farm.
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