Washington Grape and Wine Education Consortium

Washington Grape and Wine Education Consortium. I'm Greg Martin with today's Fruit Grower Report.

Vicky Scharlau, Executive Director of the Washington Association of Wine Grape Growers says one of the main tasks these days for the wine industry is making sure there will be plenty of qualified people to work in the industry.

SCHARLAU: The challenge with a growing agricultural industry is that you have needs that are met by 4-year institutions of higher education and you have needs that are met by 2-year institutions. So rather than having the challenge that each institution faces with what does the wine and grape industry needing terms of education offerings, we've stumbled along for a number of years as the industry was growing 10-years ago and found that each institution was looking at their stakeholders. Just those people who surrounded their college or university.

She says this didn't let the whole industry really move in the same direction at the same time. They asked the schools some questions.

SCHARLAU: What do you all currently now offer and let's match that up against what the industry needs now in terms of trained employees and trained management but also what doe we really need to grow going forward.

She says if the industry continues at it's current growth rate jobs will continue to grow as well.

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