06/07/07 Pear Forecast

Pear Forecast. I'm Greg Martin with today's Fruit Grower Report. Last week the Pear Bureau had their annual meeting and with it producers had a chance to compare notes on the past season and have a look at the upcoming pear crop and according to Kevin Moffitt, President of the Bureau. MOFFITT: During this meeting we review last years programs to show the growers how we utilized their assessment dollars and this meeting is also a time for the Pear Bureau to provide the industry with a look at how we're going to promote next years crop. So in addition to that we also have our very first crop estimate so it's a highly anticipated meeting on a lot of levels. So let's not keep you in suspense any longer. How does this year's crop look? MOFFITT: Regarding the crop for the upcoming season we do expect to see about an 8% increase over last years production, fresh production for the two states mostly because last year was hit by some hail in July and it reduced the crop especially in the Wenatchee area. So we've bounced back and we're expecting just over 18 million boxes of pears this year and that's up from 16.7 million boxes last year. Good news for the pear industry. Moffitt says they once again being very proactive when it comes to marketing. MOFFITT: We'll be doing a lot of back to school type of promotions. We've got some things even leading up to the Halloween period and we're working with Disney again through Disney Radio which is a good way to reach a lot of school children and that sort of ties into our back-to-school themes as well. That's today's Fruit Grower Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.