Roger Pepperl, director of marketing for Stemilt Growers LLC in Wenatchee, WA, summed up the 2013-14 pear season. “It’s coming on fast,” he told The Produce News in late July. “We’ll start picking in mid-August. We might even be a little earlier than mid-August.”

Overall volume is expected to be up approximately 20 percent this season. “Bartletts will be up a little,” he stated. “Bosc will be up a lot. We have a good crop of Concordes. Anjous are going to be way up. It’s just a bigger crop.” In all, he expects Stemilt will market 2.2 million boxes of pears this season.

Good weather in the Pacific Northwest will translate to a clean pear crop for Oneonta Starr Ranch Growers during the 2013-14 season. “Weather has been cooperating for the most part,” Dan Wohlford, national marketing representative, told The Produce News. “Spring conditions were good, and the summer months have been good as well.”

While there were some reports about scattered hail storms, Wohlford said, “It shouldn’t adversely affect the overall crop. The pear crop is looking very nice this year.”

Columbia Marketing International, headquartered in Wenatchee, WA, plans to introduce its new Sweet Gourmet Pears program this season. The company’s new high-graphic packaging will include gourmet photos of pear recipes and a QR code that links to CMI’s culinary center, where all the recipes for pears can be found. A new two-box shipper, comfortably housing two-pound pear pouch bags, will also be introduced. Sweet Gourmet Pears will also be sold in bulk with supporting POS materials and high-graphic packaging.

This year, Rosemont Farms, which is a C.H. Robinson company, added club packs of Peruvian asparagus to its product line, as well as the offering of 12-ounce bags. This is in addition to the traditional one-pound bag.

All the Peruvian importers are singing the same tune about decreased volume this year because of other options for growers. Some growers — just enough to affect volume — have pulled some asparagus acreage in the last couple of years causing supplies to drop and prices to increase.

“I keep preaching the Warren Buffet strategy,” said Jeff Friedman, president and sales manager of Carb/Americas Inc. in Pompano Beach, FL. “If everyone is going left, you should go right.”

Gourmet Trading Co., a Los Angeles-based importer-exporter of Peruvian asparagus and other specialty items, is using an innovative marketing approach to sell asparagus this year, including a unique tie-in with the re-release of the very-popular movie, The Wizard of Oz.