National Cherry Production

National Cherry Outlook. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Fruit Grower Report.

When it comes to cherries outside Washington State it looks like it might be a tough year. Tart cherries which are used in cherry pies and other processed cherry foods are in for a tight year. One state in particular suffered extreme losses in tart cherry production from the previous year, leading to a significant production drop nationwide according to Lance Honig of the National Agricultural Statistics Service.

HONIG: Tart cherries this year are only 73.1 million pounds expected to be produced. That’s a 68% reduction from last year.

Michigan lost a majority of their tart cherry crop.

HONIG: That’s normally our largest producing state and they had some weather issues this year. Of course we’re all familiar with some of the early spring reports that we heard across the country, well that was a real problem for the tart cherries this year. We saw those warm temperatures come early, trees began to bud out but unfortunately the warm weather didn’t stay. We saw a number of below freezing nights come after that doing significant damage to the crop there.

USDA's annual cherry production forecast reveals increases in many of the nation's sweet cherry growing states.

HONIG: Most of the sweet cherries produced on the west coast, the weather very good there so conversely we’re seeing an increase in production. California did bounce back from last year not to the level of 2 years ago but that was a big, big crop 2 years ago. All really seeing better conditions across the western portion of the country this year.

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