LANSING, Mich. — Last week, Michigan Department of Agriculture and Rural Development (MDARD) Director Keith Creagh encouraged the state’s fruit growers to complete the 2011 Fruit Acreage Inventory being conducted the USDA.

“The fruit industry plays an important role in meeting our goal to increase the economic impact of the food and agriculture from $71.3 billion to $100 billion in five years,” Creagh said. “The last Fruit Acreage Survey was conducted in 2006.

“It is critical for the funding of university research and extension programs and federal grants available to Michigan producers and commodity organizations, as well as other food and agriculture-based businesses to have access to current statistical information.”

The fruit survey is one of five conducted periodically by the USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) Michigan field office. In addition to the fruit survey, there is also one for nursery and Christmas trees, one for vegetables, one for turfgrass and one for wine grapes.

Although the people from USDA still refer to these collectively as the Michigan Rotational Survey, Michigan Farm Bureau Commodity Specialist Ken Nye said the surveys are not exactly rotational anymore, because the funding that guaranteed the surveys were done is no longer there.

“It’s changed a little bit because the state of Michigan really isn’t paying for these anymore,” Nye said. “We really don’t have money to do these on a rotational basis anymore.”

Funding for this fruit survey has been secured, however; this year, it’s coming from the federal Specialty Block Grant Program. The cost for it is about $120,000.

“If we hadn’t gotten the grant, industry groups would have had to figure out how to pay for it,” Nye said. “It probably would have come out of industry programs.

“There’s quite a bit of unique information that’s not available in our yearly surveys that are in the fruit survey.”

He added the survey allows processors and handlers to prepare their operations to be able to handle the crops properly, and it lets growers know what’s going on, also.

“It really sets the inventory level for the industry. It’s very beneficial as we look at research and extension activities. It’s very important to know how many acres we’re dealing with, the varieties and so forth. It really gives a lot of guidance to growers, researchers and others.”

The 2006 fruit survey included information about apples, blueberries, brambles, sweet cherries, tart cherries, grapes, peaches, pears, plums, strawberries and abandoned orchards. It also included information on direct marketing, agritourism and organic production.

The survey information was detailed; for example, for apples it included the number of farms where apples were grown in every county where there were apple orchards, for 1997, 2000, 2003 and 2006. It also included the number of acres for these farms in each county, covering the same years.

It also covered the amount of acreage by variety and year planted, going all the way back to 1971. It also covered the number of trees by variety and year planted and many other statistics.

Survey forms were mailed to the USDA’s list of Michigan fruit growers in early October. The USDA has a hotline available for anyone needing assistance filling out the survey form: That number is 800-453-7501.