Colville's Orchard Boom Outpaces Local Logistics
Thousands of new fruit trees are ready for harvest, but the town lacks the infrastructure to pack and sell the crop.
The story, cleaned up
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The need of a commission house in Colville, with sufficient means to meet the requirements of such an establishment, is apparent just now, considering the great volume of fruit now coming into the market. Fruit growers within a radius of 15 miles have planted, in aggregate, nearly a quarter of a million fruit trees, mostly apples. These orchards are now very abruptly coming before the market with a fine crop with no means of handling it. Heretofore there has been no special demand for a commission house but now there is such a demand.
“These orchards are now very abruptly coming before the market with a fine crop with no means of handling it.”
This reflects the recurring challenge in Eastern Washington's agricultural history: when production scales faster than the distribution chain, the bounty becomes a bottleneck. Today's growers face similar structural hurdles when modern supply chain disruptions threaten the viability of local harvests.
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