One of the great things about apples is that, unlike so many other kinds of produce where uniformity is so encouraged that some perfectly edible fruit is thrown to the wayside for not looking “correct”, in apple growing, diversity is encouraged, to the point that you can have an apple variety like Honeycrisp that’s patent was worth millions dollars. In a world where every banana is a Cavendish banana and every avocado is a Hass avocado, it is truly a wonder that we can have our choice between a Honeycrisp or an Empire or a McIntosh or a Golden Runner, which I had never heard of but tried at Apple Fest. It was also really interesting to hear about the apples that Cornell is working on developing like Rubyfrost and Snapdragon, and the kind of marketing strategies that go into naming an apple variety. It was also great to talk about the important of migrant workers to apple farms. I actually took a class on U.S. immigration and migration, and we talked about exactly the same thing: how there is a huge desire for migrant work in agriculture that simply cannot be met by the native population without huge culture shifts. It was great to actually address that.