TRAVERSE CITY – Mother Nature is continuing to make things tough on northwestern Lower Michigan cherry growers.
A dramatic fall-off is projected for this year’s tart cherry crop in the region.
The projected tart cherry harvest, which should begin by mid-July, is about 30 to 35 million pounds for the five-county growing region that includes Leelanau, Grand Traverse, Antrim, Benzie and Manistee counties. That’s according to crop estimates issued last week by the Cherry Marketing Institute and Cherry Industry Administrative Board – totals well below last year’s 100-million-pound tart cherry crop in the region.
“It’s definitely a smaller crop,” said Leelanau County cherry grower Emily Meizio, who serves on both industry boards as well as the Michigan Cherry Committee. “The estimates are about 30 to 35 percent of what they saw last year. … It’s a bit of a bummer for Northern Michigan.”
Industry officials aren’t exactly sure of the reasons behind the smaller harvest, but suspect it relates to a couple of cold, windy days in late April. Most of the region was spared any hard frosts while the cherries were budding this spring. But some cold and windy days during the last week in April with temperatures in the upper 20s and high winds seemed to thwart the fruit’s development, according to Nikki Rothwell, the coordinator of the Northwest Michigan Horticultural Research Station in Leelanau County.
“I don’t think we fully understand the impact of these wind freezes,” said Rothwell, who will be honored during next week’s National Cherry Festival as the Cherry Industry Person of the Year. “It’s getting harder and harder to farm with all this climate stuff going on.”
Meizio also pointed to the cold conditions in late April for hindering this year’s crop development. She noted that the annual blossoming of the cherry trees that typically light up the region’s countryside each spring was more subdued than usual, and that chilly conditions also limited the bee pollination of the fruit.
“It was not a very pretty bloom this year, and pollination was a problem,” Meizio said. “It stayed so cool for so long.”
Local growers are also assessing the damage resulting from strong thunderstorms that raced through the region Saturday morning and generated significant hail in some locations. Meizio said the hail missed her orchards, but some hail was reported across orchards near the M-72 corridor between Leelanau and Grand Traverse counties.
“It’s really spotty where it was throughout the county,” she said. “It’s kind of hard to determine the extent of the damage right now.”
Last year, the region’s sweet cherry crop encountered a major stretch of warm, wet and humid early summer weather that spawned significant disease and insect damage. Those included brown rot, cherry leaf spot and spotted wing drosophila (SWD), an invasive pest first detected in Michigan in 2010 that damages mid-to late-summer fruit crops.
Growers said they weren’t aware of the extent of the damage until the harvest began in early summer and some lost up to 75 percent of their sweet cherry crop. That prompted the U.S. Department of Agriculture to issue a disaster designation in October for sweet cherry producers in Leelanau, Grand Traverse and Antrim counties.
Meizio said she doesn’t anticipate significant damage to this year’s sweet cherry crop. She expects her family cherry farms south of Suttons Bay will start harvesting sweet cherries around July 8, with the tart harvest beginning July 15 or 16.
”I think there’s a good dark sweet crop,” Meizio said.
Melanie LaPerriere, president and CEO of the Cherry Central fruit cooperative in Traverse City, also pointed to the cold stretch of late April weather for creating “a significant drop-off” in this year’s anticipated tart cherry production for the region.
”I think (the cold damage) might have been a little worse than we realized at the time,” LaPerriere said. She also said cherry harvests are often cyclical in nature, and it’s not unusual to have a smaller crop following last year’s large local crop of about 100 million pounds.
“Conditions have just have not been supportive for a large crop,” she said.
Rothwell said it’s too early to tell if this year’s limited tart cherry crop will result in a federal disaster relief request similar to last year – those have to come from the state Department of Agriculture.
Local growers said, despite the challenges, there’s still plenty of fruit available to stock grocery stores and farmer markets with fresh and processed cherries.
“The crop’s reduced, but there’s still going to plenty of fruit that’s going to be in the market,” said John King of King Orchards, the home of multiple orchards and two farmers markets in Antrim County. The farm will continue to have “u-pick” cherries available within a couple of weeks, although it will be limited to a smaller portion of the orchard because of the light yield.
King said his orchards also saw “significant damage” from the late April conditions, and then sustained more impact from the hail storm two weeks ago – weather challenges that are becoming all too commonplace for the region’s farmers.
“It seems like some of our farmers just can’t seem to catch a break,” he said.
Nationally, the U.S. Department of Agriculture is projecting national tart cherry production at 139 million pounds this year from its annual estimate released two weeks ago. That’s down 36 percent from last year’s total of nearly 215 million. Michigan’s total tart cherry production is estimated at 101.5 million pounds, down from 171 million pounds last year.
U.S. sweet cherry production is estimated at 383,000 tons this year. That’s up 4 percent last year led by a surge in production in Washington state, the largest producer of sweet cherries in the country. Michigan sweet cherry production is projected at 14,000 tons, about 3.6 percent of the national total.