Pears To China

Pears to China. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Fruit Grower Report.

Kevin Moffitt, president and CEO of Pear Bureau Northwest had some good news for pear producers.

MOFFITT: Yes. we’ve received some excellent new regarding China after about two decades of working with our government and the Chinese government we got access for all of our varieties of pears so good news indeed.

And yes, he did say - ALL - of our pear varieties.

MOFFITT: We don’t have any restrictions on which varieties we can ship. As you may know this was tied to access for China to have a third variety of theirs shipped to the United States so they now have access for three of their pear varieties which are their three main ones of course. It’s the Ya pear, it’s the fragrant pear and now this new one is the sand pear.

And while the door is now open to all U.S. pear varieties, Moffitt says that it will most likely only be a few varieties.

MOFFITT: We believe that mainly it will be Green Anjou, perhaps some Bosc but there should be a lot of interest in the red pear varieties like Red Anjou and potentially Starkrimson at least in the beginning of the season when we can get them over there with good arrivals.

The market has been closed mainly due to some misinformation regarding fire blight and we’ll talk more with Kevin Moffitt tomorrow about that.

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