{"id":697,"date":"2004-11-05T08:10:43","date_gmt":"2004-11-05T08:10:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zmetro.com\/?p=697"},"modified":"2004-11-05T08:10:43","modified_gmt":"2004-11-05T08:10:43","slug":"sonoma_apple_fa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/?p=697","title":{"rendered":"Sonoma Apple Farmer on their declining market"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.sfgate.com\/cgi-bin\/article.cgi?file=\/chronicle\/archive\/2004\/11\/05\/NBGVV9K2LS1.DTL\">George Snyder<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><i>Walker and his extended family &#8212; kids and grandkids who help him with the annual apple harvest, which is just winding to a close &#8212; are among the last of a hardy breed who for decades put Sebastopol and the fertile hills surrounding the town on the map as the apple capital of the world.<br \/>\n&#8220;Thousands of tons of apples used to be shipped out of Sebastopol all across the country,&#8221; said Walker, who produces about a thousand tons and 25 varieties of the fruit annually, 70 percent of it processed into juice or vinegar and apple sauce, with the rest sold as fresh fruit. &#8220;I grew up with my dad raising apples,&#8221; he added, &#8220;and it&#8217;s very difficult to keep up changing amid all the changes. There&#8217;s been a tremendous change in the last 15 years in terms of keeping up with regulations and agriculture and the markets,&#8221; he said.<br \/>\n&#8220;There used to be a lot of people to sell to, like food stores, but a lot of the chains have consolidated and often demand more volume than many growers can provide. There&#8217;s been a disruption of the whole industry,&#8221; he said. <\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>George Snyder: Walker and his extended family &#8212; kids and grandkids who help him with the annual apple harvest, which is just winding to a close &#8212; are among the last of a hardy breed who for decades put Sebastopol and the fertile hills surrounding the town on the map as the apple capital of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/697"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=697"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/697\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=697"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=697"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=697"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}