Pear Exports Pt 1
With today’s Fruit Grower Report, I’m Bob Larson. Transportation and supply chain issues will continue to be a major concern for fruit growers headed into the new year.
Pear Bureau Northwest president, Kevin Moffitt says right now things are looking okay, but the focus of marketing efforts will be closer to home this year …
MOFFITT … “Now, the one export market that is really hitting on all cylinders this year is Mexico. And you heard, at the Hort Show, there was a good speaker who talked about Mexico being quite an opportunity going forward, in years to come. Well, we’re certainly happy to have Mexico pulling the amount of fruit that they’re pulling right now at decent prices.”
And that is great, Moffitt says, but our other major market,
Moffitt says lies with our neighbors to the north …
MOFFITT … “Canada is the other export market that we’re doing okay in, but they’re about even with last year. We need them to be probably 10% up from last year in order to cover the size of the crop, how much the crop has grown, compared to last year.”
As for overseas markets, Moffitt says things have changed …
MOFFITT … “The Chinese market looked pretty good. It was growing probably three years ago, and then the tariffs hit, the steel tariff retaliations and things like that. It just raised the rates to get fruit in there to too high of a degree to be profitable and so we dropped to zero.”
Tune in tomorrow for more on exports markets for Northwest pears and where the focus lies.
