Getting Close

Getting Close. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Fruit Grower Report.

The 2013 cherry harvest has been moving along since the end of June and will soon be wrapping up but it has been a challenging year according to NW Cherries, BJ Thurlby.

THURLBY: The growers have been through, I would say for the second year in a row really one of those growing years where it just is a challenge to be in agriculture. And I think the good news is the back end of this crop is - despite early rain and despite some heat we had at the beginning of July we’ve ended up having what is a fairly nice crop on the backend.

There was of course a lot of trepidation at the beginning that there might not be much of a season.

THURLBY: So far we’ve shipped about 13.2-million boxes and my guess is by the end of the day it will be up to probably 13.4 somewhere in that ballpark. And we think we still have a shot to trickle out to maybe 14-million boxes for the season but when we started the season we thought 18-million, 14-million didn’t even come into the discussion so that just kind of tells you the story this year is that this crop was bigger and Mother Nature stepped in and it wasn’t.

Thurlby says the harvest is winding down in a hurry and they are probably close to 95% done with picking and they are just finishing up with the late harvesting orchards.

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