10/31/2007 Saving the Strawberry

Saving the Strawberry. I'm Greg Martin with today's Fruit Grower Report. Saving the Oregon strawberry industry was the subject of a one-day summit held yesterday at Clackamas Community College in Oregon City, Oregon. These are challenging times for Oregon's strawberry industry, once a mainstay of the state's agricultural production. Gary Roth is with the Oregon Department of Agriculture. ROTH: The production of Oregon strawberries has continued to decline for several years, and has declined to the point that the Department of Agriculture just didn't feel it could sit idly by and watch these production numbers continue to decline. That's why ODA and the Oregon Strawberry Commission are sponsoring a special summit to help identify issues and strategies that can help revitalize the industry. ROTH: We felt the best way to address those was to invite anyone who is involved in the strawberry business, be it a grower, a fresh packer, a processor, a restaurant, a retailer, a food service operator of any sort, to come to the summit and talk about their business with Oregon strawberries. The problem certainly isn't quality. Oregon strawberries are well known for flavor and color. But the crop is primarily used for processing and a number of issues have kept the processed strawberry industry from being competitive. At about 2-thousand acres, the amount of strawberries grown in Oregon is about half of what it was ten years ago. That's today's Fruit Grower Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.