Pear harvest Coming

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

Before you know it the pear harvest will be getting underway and not long after that will start apple season. While cherry producers have not had too bad a time of it when it comes to labor shortages, Kevin Moffitt, President of Pear Bureau Northwest, says that may very well change.

MOFFITT: That’ll be a real issue when we get into having multiple crops at the same time.

The other big issue ahead of the fruit industry is of course the farm bill.

MOFFITT: We keep a close eye on the farm bill. There are a lot of specialty crop provisions or provisions in the farm bill that help our growers and our crops. It certainly appears that the Senate passed is looking good for programs that we use a lot like the Market Access Program which helps fund export promotions for pears. We get over $3-million dollars in that competitive grant process each season through that program and it’s helped us develop markets like India and Russia which have moved into our top ten.

Those markets used to be pretty much nothing just a few years ago.

MOFFITT: But there’s also a lot of research funding in there. There’s funding for fresh fruit purchases in schools. Those are all excellent opportunities to keep pears profitable. Our growers don’t get any direct subsidies. We don’t want it. I don’t think anybody is asking for that sort of thing but these kinds of programs that can help develop research and market promotion, that’s very welcome.

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