Pear Harvest Update

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

The 2012 pear crop is in the box and Kevin Moffitt, Executive Director of Pear Bureau NW says it looks like a good year.

MOFFITT: Well I think we’re off to a very good start. It’s looking pretty good. The fruit is off the trees. And the crop is coming off right about a five year average. so we’re looking at a good crop, probably 2% below where we estimated it in June

He says that already there has been good movement on the crop.

MOFFITT: We did hear that crop is excellent quality this year - a very good finish. Not much scuffing. No major hail damage. We’re hearing that the sizing is better than last year so I mean really a lot of good things in terms of the fruit itself. There had been reports of labor shortages and I think that that really worried a lot of people.

Reports of 15 to 20% shortages seemed to float around all harvest long.

MOFFITT: But the fruit did get picked and it looks really good. It’s a good sized crop with good sized fruit.

The Pacific Northwest is the largest U.S. pear production area with some 84% of the fruit coming from the region. California comes in with just 15% and then the final 1% is grown in the eastern U.S. In the world pear market the U.S. ranks third in production. More tomorrow on the 2012 pear crop.

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