01/03/07 Remaining Competitive

Remaining competitive. I'm Greg Martin with today's Fruit Grower Report. With the New Year comes new possibilities and that usually means a change of some sort. Growing fruit, change is sometimes hard to make but according to WSU Extension Agent Tim Smith, it's necessary. SMITH: There's compelling reasons why if you do your pear business the way you've always done it that we pessimists, I'm sorry, are looking ahead and we see known problems coming that if we don't change we're going to get run over . It's going to be difficult to make a living growing those wonderful pears in the system we are growing them now. Smith says that even though we grow good products, a lot of growers have become set in their ways. SMITH: What we have done in the past 110 years in this region; we know how to grow pears and we do a bang up job of it. We're the best pear production region in the United States and because of that we've settled into producing pears in this way. To remain competitive in the industry change will be necessary and Smith says the old ways of doing things, even though familiar, could be more effective. SMITH: But remember it was a difficult system, we grew our own support system, made our own wood and then we somehow tried to manage the calcium problems and the spray problems and all the rest of that because we could. We had plenty of money to do that and we had a plentiful labor supply who was willing to work for us under any circumstances whatsoever. That's today's Fruit Grower Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.