06/12/06 What`s up with the Pear Industry

What's up with the Pear industry? I'm Greg Martin with today's Fruit Grower Report. After celebrating their 75th anniversary earlier this year the pear industry gathered recently to take stock of last years crop and gaze into the crystal ball for a preview of the 2006 crop. Kevin Moffat is president of the Portland area based USA Pears and talks about the crop estimate. MOFFAT: This seasons crop coming up, this first estimate is showing a slightly smaller crop than last year. We're looking at about 2 percent fewer boxes of pears at this moment. That's the fresh pack of course. So we're looking at the first estimate of 17,800,000 packed boxes which is, we use a 44 pound box as the standard. That compares to last year at 18,200,000 boxes so just about a 2 percent decrease but it's almost on the 5 year average. Moffat said that instead of a guest speaker they asked consumers what they wanted. MOFFAT: We had six consumers from the Portland area who came up on stage. I walked the six consumers through several questions about their pear buying habits, their produce buying habits, what they liked, what they disliked and then we opened it up to those in attendance to ask questions. This consumer panel was well received. It was the highest ranked activity that we held this year so that was quite interesting and it's something we will look to potentially repeat in the future. The more you can get information from the consumer, the better. That's today's Fruit Grower Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.