Looking Ahead to Cherries

Looking Ahead to Cherries. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Fruit Grower Report.

BJ Thurlby with NW Cherries says they may be 90 days away if the weather continues as it has been but of course Mother Nature is rarely predictable. He talks about where growers are with acreage.

THURLBY: It’s increasing a little bit each year still. The big growth patterns we saw in the early 2000’s have slowed down a little bit but we’re creeping up to just over 40-thousand acres in the state of Washington and I can tell you that when you talk to some of the nursery people, they’re certainly still selling cherry trees to plant.

Thurlby says those new trees are replacing older blocks of Bing or others that needed to be renovated.

THURLBY: Where not seeing the trends that we saw 10 years ago of apple acreage being pulled out and cherries going in. In fact I would even go as far as to say that some of the older cherry orchards that I know of have actually gone into newer varieties of apples. Certain Galas or Honey Crisp. Some of the great varieties that we’re growing here in the region nowadays. But certainly acreage is going up a little bit but we don’t see it skyrocketing like we did for planting 6, 7, 8 years ago.

And yes, the government sequester will trickle down to cherries.

THURLBY: We’re actually moving money around in terms of our promotional allocations a little bit right now to make sure we’re still fully funding our foreign market programs. We think that’s really an important piece of what we’re doing in terms of serving the growers needs. We shipped 8-million boxes of a 23-million box crop here in the northwest to export markets and that’s a very important piece of our business.

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