US (MI): New apple harvester could be a "game-changer"

As the apple harvest continues here in northern Michigan, a new tool was on display in Benzie County…

As the apple harvest continues here in northern Michigan, a new tool was on display in Benzie County Wednesday morning. Some are calling it a game-changer.

2015 has been a challenging year for apple growers. Thanks to a late frost and an August hail, some growers had just a fraction of what would be a normal crop. Finding labor to pick what was left is getting tougher ever year.

"The labor market is definitely getting tighter," says Nikki Rothwell with MSU's Horticultural Research Center in Leelanau County. "What I try to remind people is: northwest Michigan is kind of the end of the road. So if most of our pickers and labor come from Florida and Texas, the move up, they follow crops, this is probably it. You're going really nowhere from northwest Michigan."

The Wafler Harvester could help; making the job of picking apples more attractive to potential workers.

It's a machine that moves both the pickers and the apple boxes together down through the orchard.

Wafler says on his family's farm in western New York, the platform has allowed workers to be 30% faster when picking all of a tree's apples and twice as fast when selectively picking the ripest apples.