07/26/06 Counting the Grapes

Counting the grapes. I'm Greg Martin with today's Fruit Grower Report. Getting an accurate assessment of your crop is crucial. The Washington Wine Industry Foundation and industry partners are funding a grape and tree fruit acreage census that will be done by the Idaho Field Office of USDA's National Agricultural Statistics Service. Vicky Scharlau is the executive director of the Foundation. SCHARLAU: When the Washington Wine Industry Foundation was going through its grant process of listening sessions in each of the three states and kind of updating where we were on our research and data grant, and one of the needs that came out of Idaho was as a growing industry they truly didn't have a basic benchmark of where they were in relationship to production or even acreage in how many wine grapes did they have, how many table grapes did they have which is really vital to not only industries like insurance and banking, but it's also critical to growers and wineries as they are trying to plan for the future. Size, varieties, what the capacity of the industry is today versus where it needs to go in the future, so counting grapes, in this case the acreage is really important because it will enable the growers and wineries to set a level by which they can grow from. The work is in progress now, and will be completed in stages by February 2007. The USDA awarded twelve research partnerships for a total of $5.1 million toward the research and development of new non-insurance risk management tools. That's today's Fruit Grower Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.