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News
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Oregon celebrates a berry good product
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7/6/2011
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Article Content Suggested lead
As a wide variety of Oregon berries ripen this summer, growers and processors expect a two-day celebration to bear fruit in terms of generating publicity and appreciation for the agricultural specialty:
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Audio 01
The Oregon Berry Festival to be held July 22nd and 23rd in Portland highlights all that is good about berries, including their high quality, excellent health benefits, and great taste. Don Sturm is a berry grower from Corbett:
STURM: "We've got a commodity here that could really grow and be something unique and put a lot of people to work if we could put this together. I think the Berry Festival, if we can get people in to see what we've got from other directions around the country, will help us tremendously." :16
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Whether it is strawberries, blueberries, blackberries, raspberries, or cranberries, Oregon is well known for producing high quality, great tasting fruit that is good for you:
STURM: "I would have never thought 30 years ago that two of my business partners were actually cancer doctors in a new business that we've formed." :08
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Consumer demand for berries has skyrocketed in recent years as diets incorporate healthier foods. The Oregon Berry Festival will provide a farmers' market of berries, a trade show for businesses with value-added berry products, a tour bus to a local berry farm, a chef's berry cookoff, and a gala dinner. It's an Oregon-grown commodity worth celebrating. In Salem, I'm Bruce Pokarney.
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STURM hopes the Oregon Berry Festival will call more attention to an important statewide industry that consumers may not always appreciate:
"Oregonians around here don't know how good they've got it with the Hood strawberries, the Marionberries, the black raspberries, and the different varieties of blueberries we grow here. They have a complete different taste. It's so much superior to any place else in the world." :16
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Additional audio: Audio 04
STURM says the future of Oregon berries could be very bright, and he hopes the festival will help build support for the industry:
"My hope for it would be that Oregon berries would be the spotlight of it and we would be the premium berry of the world. We could put a lot of people to work and make a decent living and grow a really good food safe product that has a very good taste and a lot of health benefits to it." :17
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Full story
http://oregon.gov/ODA/news/110706berry.shtml |
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