10/11/06 Promoting Fruit

Promoting Fruit. I'm Greg Martin with today's Fruit Grower Report. Andrew Willis is excited about his new position with the Washington State Fruit Commission. WILLIS: I'm excited to be here and it's going to be a lot of fun and a lot of hard work. Willis replaced David Severn as the commission's domestic promotion director. WILLIS: I work to promote NW cherries and soft fruit in the domestic market and we slice Canada into the domestic market so I work in the United States and Canada to promote NW cherries and soft fruit in media, print, television. Any means that is cost effective and media effective. Willis has had several jobs in the past working in and around the Ag business and recently finished a very interesting position. WILLIS: I had an internship at Brian Christie an Ag consultancy over in Seattle and worked with them on Washington State wine access into international wine markets and from there I headed down to Central America. I had always wanted to work on my Spanish. It was a great opportunity for me down there with Habitat for Humanity. So I worked with them for two years as their International Fund Raising Coordinator and got a lot of homes built. So what is involved in the position? WILLIS: Obviously the idea is to expand cherry market and consumption in the United States. It's such an incredible product and the fruit is just great and so it's really looking at educating the consumer on the quality of the product. And also there's a lot of health benefits related to cherries that the average person doesn't know. That's today's Fruit Grower Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.