Apples Top the "Dirty Dozen" List: Vermont Growers Respond

By Caroline Homan, Food & Nutrition Education Coordinator

This June, the Environmental Working Group released its latest Shopper’s Guide to Pesticides in Produce, better known as the “Dirty Dozen."

The shocker this year? Apples scored the number one spot.

98 percent of the apples in the study tested positive for pesticides; 92 percent for multiple pesticides.

With apple season upon us, I spoke with three apple growers to get their feedback about what exactly the federal “Dirty Dozen” list means for consumers of locally-produced apples. Should we hesitate before reaching for that ripe red apple dangling from the tree? Nick Cowles from Shelburne Orchards, Ezekiel Goodband, orchardist for Scott Farm in Dummerston, and Bill Suhr from Champlain Orchards responded to my questions about their growing practices.

Families First

Growing apples isn’t just a business for our local growers, it’s a way of life - living, working, and raising children in an orchard engenders a greater awareness of food safety than your typical industrial-scale enterprise: “Most of the growers in this state are owner operators. We live in the orchards. We have families. We know and love our neighbors…This is our home,” says Nick Cowles, long-time owner of Shelburne Orchards. Bill Suhr says that as new parents, he and his wife understand and appreciate consumer concerns about pesticides and food safety. As a grandfather, Ezekiel Goodband from Scott Farm concurs. “My children grew up helping me in the orchard and now my grandchildren help me. I’ve always taken my responsibility to have a safe orchard and wholesome fruit very seriously.”

Bottom line? In these days of anonymous food production and consumption, knowing that our apple growers are invested personally in the health of their harvest matters. I would rather eat an apple from Vermont than China, and while that’s something of an intangible, it has to do with trust in the people who grow our food.

No Organophosphates, No Post-Harvest Fungicide Dips

But what exactly is happening in the orchards to make apples the number one contaminated crop among fruits and vegetables? And what’s different about the Vermont orchards that sell directly to City Market?

“Apples grown conventionally often have multiple pesticide residues due to the use of pesticides during the growing phase as well as post harvest, when apples are sprayed with another fungicide that allows them to stay in cold storage facilities for months," said Sara Sciammacco of the EWG, speaking to New Hope 360. One particularly egregious category of insecticide is “organophospates” – first developed in Germany during WWI as a by-product of nerve gas development, these pesticides are nerve poisons that are cheap, effective, and lethal. All three growers emphatically do not use organophosphates since less toxic, albeit more expensive, alternatives have come on the market, though they continue to be big business for “big ag.”

I was surprised to learn that conventional apples are also routinely dipped in fungicides before storage, thus contributing to their high pesticide load, though reassured that none of the local growers I spoke to follow this practice. “We choose not to treat our apples with a fungicide prior to cold storage,” says Suhr, despite his goal to provide crisp, juicy apples to customers year-round. “We’ve never used any post harvest spray or dips…ever!!” says Cowles. “We use no sprays to keep apples from ripening, or make them more crisp after picking, or fungicidal drenches for cold storage,” says Goodband. “And we have tree frogs singing in our tree!” he crows.

Integrative Pest Management

That brings us to one of the main keys these growers use to manage their orchards: Integrative Pest Management, or IPM. The University of Vermont maintains an extensive IPM checklist that covers a range of practices growers use to prevent pests from becoming a bigger nuisance requiring heavier intervention. Suhr pays careful attention to “pest monitoring/scouting/trapping” and tries things like spraying alternative rows to reduce pesticide use. He also is investing in varietals that are bred to be more disease-resistant that he hopes to manage organically.

Goodband, who has a degree in ecology, says his goal is “to help enhance the biodiversity of the orchard’s ecosystem.” These days, pests “are only a small part of the total insect population; there simply isn’t enough room for them to cause major description or threaten the crop.”  That doesn’t mean he gets off “scott-free” (pun-intended): the late-season apples sometimes have little black spots that come from a fungus called flyspeck – a trade-off for choosing to spray less for it.

You, the Consumer

The growers are clearly doing a lot to reduce pesticides in their orchards. But all the growers point out that you – yes, you! – are the driving force behind their ability to dig their heels in and resist heavy chemical sprays, even while they innovate and expand their operations (every child in the Burlington school district can now eat a Champlain Orchards apple each and every day). “You ask! You care! That’s huge!” says Cowles.

Informed consumers who buy locally with as few middle-people as possible are ensuring that growers get a better price for their apples, even if they’re not always perfectly shaped or have an occasional black speck. And that means more accountability, grower to eater. “Scott Farm and I would much rather put the crop at risk than take risks with the health and well being of the people who we hope will enjoy the fruits of our labors,” says Goodband.

“Thank you for making the effort to know your farmer and better understand the local food we produce,” says Suhr of Champlain Orchards.  

Apples by the Numbers

• Vermont’s estimated crop of apples for this year is 600,000 cases.
• New York State will produce 30 million cases of apples this year, and Washington State almost 130 million cases.
• Vermont’s population is just a little over 600,000. That would be one case of apples (or apple products) per person if everybody in the state purchased local apples in season directly from the orchard or from stores that sell local apples.
• Due to damage from hail early in the season, Vermont’s apple production is down about 25%. Overall apple production in New England is up about 10%.
• McIntosh is the most popular apple variety grown in Vermont, with just over 50% of production dedicated to them. Red Delicious, Cortland and Empire are the next most popular varieties.
• Vermont has 3,000 acres of apple orchards. That’s about 10 times the amount of land being farmed in the Intervale.
• It takes about 8 sliced apples to make an apple pie.

To read a response to the EWG’s Dirty Dozen list, the U.S. Apple Association responded with the “Delicious Dozen". Click here to read.