Northwest Pear Crop Larger Than First Reported

An updated 2019-2020 pear crop estimate was released Wednesday morning.  Pear Bureau Northwest said the current estimate is around 18.6 million standard box equivalents, or 408,800 tons.  That’s an 8% increase from the initial crop estimate released in May.  This week’s figure is also 1% higher than the five year average, but is still slightly less than last year’s harvest.

Picking is slated to begin across the Northwest in the coming days, and will continue through September.  While close to the five year average, the start of harvest is later than what was reported in 2018.

Pear Bureau Northwest says the top varieties this year will be:

• Green Anjou at 9.5 million standard boxes, or roughly 51% of total Northwest fresh pear crop
• Green Bartlett at 4.8 million standard boxes, or 26% of the total crop
• Bosc with 2.5 million standard boxes, or 13% of the total crop
• Red Anjou is estimated at 1.1 million standard boxes, about 6% of the crop.

Organic pear numbers are included in the overall estimate and their numbers continue to grow with more acres in transition. This year's organic estimate is 1.9 million standard boxes, 42,000 tons, making up 11% of the total Northwest crop. Looking at the entire organic crop, growers project 705,350 standard boxes of Green Anjou, with the Green Bartlett and Bosc crops sizes projected at 700,550 and 273,400 standard boxes, respectively.

"The increase from the initial estimate is due to the fruit sizing up very well in the last two months. Growers are reporting large, beautiful fruit on the trees with sizes that are in demand from retailers in the U.S. and Canada. With ample larger sized pears, there will also be plenty of smaller fruit to fill the demand for bagged pears and for the export markets that prefer smaller fruit," stated Kevin Moffitt, President and CEO of Pear Bureau Northwest.

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