Pear Harvest Part 2

Pear Harvest Part 2. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Fruit Grower Report.

Kevin Moffitt, president and CEO of Pear Bureau Northwest says that with the harvest completed they are now busy selling the harvest and that prices are up.

MOFFITT: Washington Clearing House website prices for pears are up over last year, starting out strong. And I believe they are going to continue to even get stronger. We’ve had some excellent movement this year, shipments. We actually had three weeks of record shipments of Bartlett’s in September. So we had three weeks in a row where we shipped over 300-thousand boxes each week.

The northwest is the dominant pear producing region in the U.S. and retailers from all over the U.S. are selling the product. Moffitt says they like to help their retailers and award them at the same time.

MOFFITT: We instigated a program beginning last year where we analyzed our retail accounts which we deal with. And we look at them in terms of growth in their pear volume. How much fruit they display compared to their competitors in terms of how many varieties and how much square footage they have.

Based on these and other criteria, Pear Bureau has presented a special award.

MOFFITT: Through that analysis we have nominated Meijer which is a store out of the midwest based very strong in Michigan and Ohio and up in that area. And they’re kind of a super-center type store and they showed some very dominant pear sales last year and some very good growth so Meijer has been named our Retailer of the Year this year.

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