Challenges and Optimism Pt 1
From the Ag Information Network, this is today’s Fruit Grower Report. With a decent 2024 cherry season behind them, Northwest growers are wondering what kinds of challenges they’ll face in this new year.
Northwest Cherry Grower’s president, BJ Thurlby says the biggest challenge we’ve seen the past few years are these weird heat waves with extended periods of 110 or better …
THURLBY … “This year, for instance, almost twice as much fruit came off the week after the 4th of July than our estimates estimated, than any of our growers estimated before the season. And the reason is, is because that heat pushed that fruit forward and we had a week of it right over the 4th of July. You know, and that’s just a sustained issue that, as an industry, there’s not a lot we can do, but there’s mitigation tactics that our scientific community is working on and, you know, I think it’s going to be critical moving forward no matter what.”
Heat, Thurlby says is something we’re used to, but lately …
THURLBY … “Here in Yakima, we probably would call it a mild summer, but you know it’s going to be in the 90s for a good portion of the summer. And that’s fine, cherries can sustain that. But when we get into those years where we get up closer to 110 and growers take action and they’re trying to figure out how to operate in that scenario and, like I said, it creates confusion. And a lot of times it’ll create an excess of fruit which we didn’t see, and we didn’t have on the radar screen in any given week and it seems like those weeks are always a challenge.”
Tune in tomorrow for more from Thurlby on why, after that, he’s feeling pretty good about how things are looking for this year’s cherry crop.
