More on What Happen With the 2012 Cherry Harvest

More on What Happen With the 2012 Cherry Harvest. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Fruit Grower Report.

BJ Thurlby, President of NW Cherries recently talked to the annual Washington State Horticultural Association and discussed what went right and wrong with the 2012 cherry harvest. He says the overall numbers were really good.

THURLBY: Daily shipments averaged 400-thousand plus boxes for over 26 days compared to 12 days in 2011. 52% of our crop was row 11 or smaller coming out of the shoots. By the end of the deal with all our late season varieties we did bring our row size up

Of course it’s not just about how many boxes of cherries you pick but it’s also the size of the fruit and that’s what row sizes are. He says the first 7 months of 2012 were the hottest in recorded history for the U.S.

THURLBY: All the states except Washington experienced the hottest summer that they’ve had on record. What did this do to us? It was surreal to me because I was getting calls from like the Wall Street Journal and people were asking me, “how’s the drought affecting your growers?” And I was sitting in my office watching the rain come down.

And Thurlby talks about the consumers and problems with buying habits during the year.

THURLBY: Senior singles, established couples, empty nesters, senior couples. That’s our older consumer and some of our best consumers are people over 50. They make up 40% of our total consumer group. Those people were making way fewer trips to the grocery store. East of the Mississippi to the east coast they had humidity at 100% at 10 o’clock at night for a month and a half straight. So those people just weren’t getting out much.

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