This past week I attended AppleFest down in the Ithaca Commons, which was every bit as wonderful as last year. In particular, Professor Blalock gave an interesting presentation before heading down to the festival about some new developments in the apple market. He talked about “club apples”: apples that are only allowed to be grown by a few licensed growers. This is in contrast to apples like Honeycrisp, which can be grown by basically anyone as long as they pay royalties to the grower who initially developed the apple. This new model has upsides and downsides: on the one hand, this makes the apples much less widespread (especially in smaller communities). On the other hand, with a tighter control of the growers, a breeder can more easily ensure the quality of the product. This model is more conducive to the notion that an apple variety is a “brand”: with marketing and a fancy name to boot. Cornell currently has two club apples in development; RubyFrost and SnapDragon. They’re not on the market yet but you may see them in stores in a few years.
The festival itself was great: everything apple you could possibly find. Cider, doughnuts, crisp, cobbler. It’s also a good opportunity to get a change of scenery from the Cornell campus and just relax for a few hours. Overall, highly recommended.
I’ve never really thought about the politics behind apple growing before. It’s interesting to think that Cornell essentially owns a certain breed of apple and its genetic make-up, just like a media producer can own intellectual property. Although I know the same can be true for other kinds of produce, it really hits home when it comes to apples (especially in the fall).
I never knew club apples existed until Professor Blalock mentioned it. I agree that there are pros and cons about the system but I think I would side with having these apples grown widespread so more people can enjoy them.