Pear Crop Estimate

Pear Crop Estimate. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Fruit Grower Report.

Believe it or not this is the end of the pear season. The 2010 pear season with 2011 just around the corner. Christie Mather, Director of Communications, Pear Bureau Northwest says they recently took a look into the crystal ball and gives up a peek at what’s coming up.

MATHER: Well the first blush look at the crop this year is showing that fresh pears production for this year is going to increase by 8% compared to last year. So last year we had a crop size of 17.8 million standard box equivalents which are about 44 pounds a box and this year we are looking at 19.2 million.

Mather says that should be about the 4th largest crop on record providing everything progresses normally.

MATHER: The 5-year average is about 18.2 million just as a5-year reference. You know last year was just a little bit of a shorter crop but this year we’re really looking forward to seeing it bounce back and to be one of our larger crops.

So how is the 2010 year wrapping up?

MATHER: We have less than 5% of this years crop remaining which there’s no surprise there. We’re still selling down that very final amount of the crop, mostly green Anjou pears are still remaining this time of year. You know green Anjou makes up over 50% of out total crop and this year we are expecting to see an increase of 6% for the green Anjou so that variety is growing as well compared to last year.

Tomorrow we’ll talk with Mather about the 2011 marketing plans for pears.

That’s today’s Fruit Grower Report. I’m Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.