More on Cherries

More on Cherries. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Fruit Grower Report.

The 2012 cherry crop might be a bit different this year. The president of NW Cherries, BJ Thurlby says due to a freeze in Michigan a lot of northwest cherries might be headed to the processed market.

THURLBY: There’s going to be a huge deficit in the United States relative to processed cherry products to go into juices; to go into brine as far as Maraschino cherries and that’s going to make for kind of an interesting dynamic for us because we are a very fresh market oriented industry but we happen to have cherries and there’s not an awful lot of cherries out there.

Of course it is still early in the game and there are many variables, mainly the weather but Thurlby is optimistic.

THURLBY: Looks like we’ve got a pretty good crop and we’re thinking if more drops than anticipated we’ll know more, we’ll have another estimate out in another week or two but for today it looks like we’ve got a great crop and it looks like the spread is reasonable. The degree day units that you look at in terms of your regions and the degree days in those areas have about the same separation they did in 2011.

The last two years the cherry crop was running about 2 weeks behind the norm.

THURLBY: All the growing districts are about 5 to 6 days ahead of last year which is a good thing. I think the growers will be happy they have fruit available for the 4th of July this year. Some of the growers will, certainly. We don’t know if that’s going to be 3 or 4 million boxes. It’s probably somewhere in that range.

That’s today’s Fruit Grower Report. I’m Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.