With today’s Fruit Grower Report, I’m Bob Larson. Northwest Pear estimates are out and it looks to be a slightly down year for the fourth consecutive year, following a record year in 2013.

Pear Bureau Northwest president Kevin Moffitt says the forecast isn’t bad, just down slightly from last year in terms of millions of boxes expected in the 2017 harvest …

KEVIN MOFFITT-3B = 22 … “17.6 this year versus 18 last year, so there’ll be plenty of fruit for all of the U.S. markets. Our exports in Mexico and Canada, those are our two export markets, there’ll be plenty for those as well as our developing markets in export, including India, the Middle East and China. So, there’ll be plenty of fruit for the world.”

Moffitt says the different pear varieties show a range of differences from one to the other …

KEVIN MOFFITT-5 = 30 … “The Green Anjou crop is about 7 percent above last year, but last year was a small Anjou crop. The Bosc crop is actually 30-percent below last year! It’s 26 percent below the five-year average so I would say that will be the biggest issue this year in terms of availability. We have much smaller than normal Bosc crop. The Red Anjou is actually 10-percent over last year and 6 percent over a five-year average. So, those are the three that stand out.”

Moffitt says the colder winter this year has probably pushed the start of Washington’s pear harvest back a couple of weeks from last year to early September.

The promotion budget for both domestic and foreign markets will be about $6.4 million, down $1 million from last year.