Fruit & Veggie Report Card Part 2

Fruit & Veggie Report Card Part 2. I'm Greg Martin with today's Fruit Grower Report. Elizabeth Pivonka, President and CEO of the Produce for Better Health Foundation says a new report from the National Fruit & Vegetable Alliance groups positives and negatives just like an old school report card. It looks at how the industry has changed over a 5-year period. Today we take a look at a good report. PIVONKA: On the "A" list, one of the positives we've seen over the past 5 years is inclusion of WIC fruit and vegetable vouchers and as of 2009 there are $6 per month for children and $8 a month or more for women. Another "A" that we've given ourselves because we at least met the goal of launching the "More Matters" campaign. We need to continue to expand it but at least we launched it. And then we gave ourselves an "A" for the expansion of the fresh fruit and vegetable program which is a federally funded initiative in schools. She says that of course there is still work being done in these areas but they saw enough improvement to give themselves the high marks. PIVONKA: The in terms of "B" which was substantial progress, the National Institutes of Health has bumped up the amount of funding for nutrition and obesity research. Unfortunately less than 1% of all of NIH nutrition projects are spent on fruits and vegetables specifically so we have a little bit of work in that arena to get them to focus more on fruits and vegetables. Tomorrow we will take a look at the mid and lower grades found in the fruit and vegetable report card. You can find the entire report online at pbhfoundation.org. That's today's Fruit Grower Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.