Getting Ready for Pear Harvest

Getting Ready for Pear Harvest. I'm Greg Martin with today's Fruit Grower Report. Glancing at the calendar I realized it wasn't June or even July anymore. In fact it's almost September which means back to school, fair time and harvest. Kevin Moffitt with Pear Bureau Northwest says they are beginning to see some pears being harvested. MOFFITT: Seems as though they have started with the Star Crimson's already probably in the last week or so and there are some Bartlett's coming in to the packing houses right now so we are under way. This season follows last years' record crop so we're down against last year in our estimates by about 11%. That may not be good news but according to Moffitt it's not necessarily bad news. MOFFITT: But we're only about 2% off of a five year average crop so it's not that far below a five year average and that we think is going to be very manageable with the way the economy and everything is right now I'm glad we don't have another record crop. Moffitt says that for the most part pears are doing well at the retail level. MOFFITT: What we've found a reality with pears is in the supermarkets are our mainline varieties are really not the most expensive item in the produce department by any means and we're not the least expensive either but sort of in the middle so we aren't seeing as much trading down on our mainline varieties as some other products might be but generally speaking pears are in a pretty good level in the produce department and that does help us. That's today's Fruit Grower Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.