Building on NW Grapes & Wines
Building on NW Grapes & Wines. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Fruit Grower Report.
Vicky Scharlau, executive director of the Washington Association of Wine Grape Growers recently returned from the National Grape and Wine Initiative board meeting in
SCHARLAU: The National Grape and Wine Initiative is a nationwide coalition of all grape and grape products sectors so it represents grape growers, grape processors, wineries, representatives of all the academic institutions, cooperative extension organizations.
Scharlau talks about what the organization is trying to do.
SCHARLAU: The vision of NGWI is really to enable the United States grape and wine industry to be a world leader in consumer value and sustainability and to be able to continue to contribute to the quality of life in rural communities because it is such a value added business in all the communities where there are grape growing businesses and wineries and grape processing facilities.
The industry is looking for some significant growth in the next 10 to 11 years.
SCHARLAU: NGWI’s goal is to triple the industries economic impact by the year 2020 which means we would build our industry to a $150 billion annually. And we really do think it’s a conservative estimate because of our current economic impact of over $50 billion dollars annually.
That’s today’s Fruit Grower Report. I’m Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.
