05/13/08 Pear Award

Pear Award. I'm Greg Martin with today's Fruit Grower Report. We are starting to see a lot of action in orchards. Apples, apricots and pears. The folks that promote pears in the northwest, Pear Bureau Northwest recently won an award according to Christie Mather, communications manager. MATHER: Through the CPMA and the Produce News, for the past 10 years they have been awarding organizations like ours that are active in supporting their 5 to 10 A Day program which is similar to the US 5 A Day program which is now known as the Fruits & Veggies-More Matters program. So they award the fresh health award for folks that really go above and beyond in promoting the messaging of the 5-10 A Day program for better health. The CPMA is the Canadian Produce Marketing Association. Mather says they are very excited to win this award. MATHER: What we've done to earn this award is we have done a great deal of outreach over the past few years to students. We work with elementary, middle and high schools and we have a nutritionist known as the Pear Lady and across Canada she has been in 35 different schools just this year. The Pear Lady works to show students about good nutrition using pears as an example. MATHER: She shows them how to tell when a pear is ripe, she shows them all the different varieties of pears and it's a really fun way to show all these kids these colorful versions of just one fruit that they might see in their supermarket and get them excited about it. That's today's Fruit Grower Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.