2014 Cherry Crop Updates

With fingers crossed and one eye on the sky cherry producers have knuckled down and gotten a lot of cherries picked in the last 3 weeks. BJ Thurlby with Northwest Cherries says they have shipped almost half a million boxes in the last 6 days and that the quality has been extremely good. And he says that the industry estimate of 21-million boxes is still good.

THURLBY: We think that estimate, our 21-million box estimate is a pretty good estimate in terms of where this thing is thing is going to come out. So far we've been tracking within 2% of our estimated daily shipments which is, when you are throwing a dart and trying to guess a cherry crop, that's a pretty good batting average and we're happy with it.

He says that before the end of the month they hope to ship another couple million boxes.

THURBLY: I'm excited about it. It's so fun to see fruit going out that doesn't have weather issues. Bottom line is the last 3 or 4 years we have and it's been a really good run and we've got momentum going right now and let's just hope nothing happens to slow it down because the Fourth of July is going to serve as a slingshot shooting right in through July and I'm expecting to see great cherry displays all over the country and all over the world here at the beginning of this next month so that should be positive and then hopefully we just keep filling those displays and selling this fruit though. The growers are doing such an amazing job up to this point that I don't obviously see any reason why we can't expect to see this type of quality and this see through all the way through the season.

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