LAWRENCE — When Terhune Orchards co-owner Gary Mount flew to Chile to attend the 55th annual conference of the International Fruit Tree Association, he expected business as usual and a chance to bask in South America’s summer sun.
What Mount didn’t anticipate when he and his wife Pam boarded the plane in January was the rare honor awaiting him in Chile’s capital, Santiago — induction into the IFTA’s Hall of Fame to acknowledge his two decades of work to advance fruit production globally.
Mount is only the fifth person so honored in the association’s half-century, and he admits it left him “really thrilled.”
“It tells me, don’t stop now,” said Mount, a 10th generation New Jersey farmer, who calls himself “a very young 67.”
“I didn’t know the award was coming, but my wife knew. She and my daughter hacked my computer to get my resume,” Mount said, proudly referring to Pam Mount, Lawrence Township’s former mayor and Terhune’s hardworking co-owner.
“It was really great to be recognized by my peers all over the world,” he said. “To realize that the award has only been given four times previously in 55 years is humbling.”
The trip included a four-day bus tour of orchards and vineyards stretching south from Santiago to Valdiva. That’s where the Mounts headed back to the Garden State while other conference attendees continued on to Argentina and Brazil.
Since its inception in 1958, the fruit growers’ association has been instrumental in revolutionizing fruit growing around the world, primarily through the introduction and development of dwarfing fruit tree rootstocks.
Dwarfing trees started with the British in the 1930s-1940s, he added, and took off in the U.S. in the early ’70s.
As an IFTA member for 36 years, Mount has served 11 years on the board of directors and 20-plus years on the research committee, including 18 years as chairman. The committee awards funds to researchers in fruit production and provides direction on what fruit growers want.
“Our research has supported and stimulated modernization of fruit production, which has changed over the past 40 years,” Mount said.
In decades past. fruit growers relied on huge trees, maybe 25-feet tall, that took years to reach maturity and bear fruit.
Today, all fruit comes from smaller trees achieved chiefly by dwarfing the rootstock, resulting in much faster production, says Mount.
“All my trees are dwarfs except for those that were here 37 years ago near the main entrance when we bought the farm on Cold Soil Road,” noted Mount.
The Mounts grow 36 different crops, fruits, vegetables and flowers, on 200 acres spread over four farms — three farms are theirs, a fourth is leased. Terhune’s apple, peach, pear and cherry trees take up 50-plus acres, says Mount.
Under the old system, he produced about 500 bushels of fruit per acre compared to 900 bushels under today’s growing methods.
Even though the trees are small and yield a smaller number of apples, overall production per acre is higher and so is efficiency. “There’s no need for ladders and climbing, or the previous long wait to start picking,” he said.
Mount calls the IFTA “an amazing organization based on free exchange of information around the world.”
IFTA membership leans heavily toward U.S. and Canadian fruit growers, but many other countries are represented and host conferences and tours “for a very intensive study of what goes on in orchards,” Mount said.
New Jersey farmers have welcomed two IFTA delegations, the most recent five years ago.
“Terhune was one of the stops for the growers who came from all over,” Mount recalled.
“We even took them into New York City to see the green markets,” he said. These are tailgate markets set up in parking lots by farmers from New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania and Connecticut.