Northwest Cherries in 2024 Pt 2

Northwest Cherries in 2024 Pt 2

Bob Larson
Bob Larson
From the Ag Information Network, this is today’s Fruit Grower Report. 2024 was a pretty solid year for Northwest cherries with 19.5 million boxes, and the overall quality of the fruit was outstanding.

BJ Thurlby, president of the Northwest Cherry Growers, says the fruit quality helped keep them on store shelves longer …

THURLBY … “I would say that, with some of the promotion activities we had planned, had a huge, positive impact on the overall season.”

And, Thurlby says the California crop helped out as well …

THURLBY … “Just a lot of things that went right merchandising-wise, you know, California got out of our way, which was very refreshing after the last couple of years, and they had a good-sized crop. You know, they had a 9 million box crop so it wasn’t a short crop on their end.”

California’s pricing, Thurlby says was on point for consumers …

THURLBY … “But they did something a little different this year. They actually tried to price the fruit to kind of keep it in that $4.99 to $3.99 range at retail, which we found has a big impact on movement.”

The higher prices in recent years, Thurlby says was a bit much …

THURLBY … “We all, here in our industry, we think that our cherries are worth any amount of money per pound, and I’m right in there with my growers on that because it is a special, unique, seasonal product. But the reality is there’s parts of the United States, there’s parts of the world where people aren’t going to spend $10 per pound for any produce item.”

That’s BJ Thurlby, president of Northwest Cherry Growers.

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