Finishing Up Cherries

Finishing Up Cherries. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Fruit Grower Report.

The 2013 cherry harvest has pretty much wrapped up. It was a year that started with great optimism after a very good year last year then proceeded to be plagued by challenge after challenge and according to BJ Thurlby with NW Cherries.

THURLBY: This is an end to what I would say one of the more challenging cherry seasons we’ve had in years and that’s a big statement because really, three out of the last four years I felt like we’ve just had irregular conditions and tough weather and the growers have been more than challenged.

Thurlby says as they look at it it was much better to have at least some crop than none.

THURLBY: We ended up packing about 14.7 million boxes and of that grouping there’s still a few late, late cherries being shipped out of the industry today but it’s just a handful. Less than a thousand boxes per day so this thing is pretty much done for 2013. Looking back at it, you look at it by variety and every variety this year was affected by rain at some level, at some point but the one that was really hit hard was Bing.

Bing cherries are one of the staple varieties for the northwest cherry growers.

THURLBY: So our original estimate of 18-million, we think we lost about 4-million off that and here we are at the end of the season and it appears that the crops going to be just under 15-million boxes. I don’t know one grower out there that had a full crop or even ended up with even close to what he thought he had or she thought she had at the start of the spring. So, just one of those years.

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