U.S. fresh apple holdings on February 1, 2023, totaled 71.9 million bushels, 7.3% less than the inventories reported last February and 12.6 percent less than the February five year average. These are the new apple production and trade figures from USApple, which is based in Falls Church, VA. 

A year ago, total U.S. fresh apple holdings were 77.6 million 42-pound bushels. On Feb. 1, 2021, the figure was 82.3 million.

The downward swing this year comes despite an astronomical leap in Michigan fresh holdings to 4.7 bushels in 2023, up from 1.8 a year ago. 

A low volume crop in Washington state fell this year to 60.6 fresh-market bushels, down from 67.7 in 2022. Another big fall for fresh apples this year is in New York state, which fell to 4.0 million bushels, down from 4.9 in 2023.

FreshFruitPortal.com analysis finds that Gala is by far the United States’ largest-volume fresh apple variety in storage this Febraury, at 15.1 million bushels. Red Delicious comes in second at 11.4 million bushels.  Fuji ranks third at 8.6 million, followed by Granny Smith (7.7 million) and then HoneyCrisp (6.6 million).

U.S. apple exports for 2022-23 are the lowest volume in the last six years, at about 13 million bushels. On a five-year average, the U.S. imports about three million bushels of apples per year.