2011 Pear Harvest

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

The 2011 pear harvest like most other ag products has been late but according to Kevin Moffitt, President of Pear Bureau Northwest, it looks good.

MOFFITT: We’re still harvesting, believe it or not. Some areas are going to be - oh potentially up until the first part of November so it’s very late this year as all the crops have been. But the fruit is actually sizing a little better than we expected, maybe because it’s hanging longer. Really the upper valleys and Hood River and in the Wenatchee area, these are the areas that are harvesting this late.

And what about the size of the fruit.

MOFFITT: We probably will peak a little bit smaller than last year, perhaps on 90 size pears but we’ll have plenty of sizing in all ranges meaning that we’re going to have a good amount of fruit for the domestic market and we’ll have plenty of fruit for the export market that like the smaller sizes but we expect to have more of the smaller sizes in total.

Moffitt talks about one way they hope to market pears in stores.

MOFFITT: We’re talking to a lot of domestic retailers and Canadian retailers to ensure that they consider putting two sizes of pears out on display. Quite often retailers will just stick with one size. So we’re talking to them about putting a second display of pears either in bags or totes or even jumbled pears, a bulk display with a second size.

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