Cherries: bonanza or bust? | Central Valley Business Journal

Cherries: bonanza or bust? | Central Valley Business Journal

Thursday, 30 June 2011 20:50

Cherries: bonanza or bust?

Written by Craig W. Anderson


Central Valley cherry growers won’t be playing the Sinatra classic, “It Was a Very Good Year,” because it wasn’t.

Why?

Each of the more than 200 crops grown in the Central Valley is threatened by weather in some way - it can be too hot, too cold, too wet, too dry - but rain is the bane for cherries, a big money crop when Mother Nature decides to nurture it with dry, cool spring weather.

Unfortunately, the Central Valley cherry crop conundrum was never more evident than in May and June when a predicted near-record yield was destroyed by the arrival of lengthy spring rains and thunderstorms.


Cherries are big

Cherries are a vital cog in the agricultural machine of San Joaquin County and the Central Valley: of the county’s Top Ten Leading Crops, cherries checked in at No. 3 in 2009 with a value of more than $212.7 million, according to the latest figures available as noted in the “2009 Agricultural Report for San Joaquin County” from the Agricultural Commissioner’s office.

A major loss for this major crop would trigger a ripple effect across the agricultural community as fewer cherry pickers would be needed, thus reducing their dollars spent in the Central Valley during their time working here; packing operations would have to hire more workers to sort the cherries to remove damaged fruit, thereby elevating their costs; transportation companies wouldn’t work as much; less fuel would be sold; farm labor contractors would contract fewer workers; and ultimately, consumers would pay more for cherries in stores.

And that’s what confronted cherry growers and packers as the 2011 cherry harvest stumbled to a halt with the sweet, red fruit turning bitter, leaving many growers in the red financially.


Evil rain = huge losses

Rain, and a lot of it, in June meant doom for California’s prime cherry growing area in San Joaquin County as storms arrived, delivering rain, hail, wind and then paused just long enough for sufficient warm weather to help split the fruit on the trees.

“The loss statewide will be between 30 percent and 50 percent of the crop,” said Jim Culbertson, executive manager of the California Cherry Advisory Board in Lodi. “Most growers will have a 50 percent loss.”

Mike Quashnick grows cherries near Lodi and, he said, “It’s been more than a decade since we’ve had a weather event affect the crop to this extent. 2011 was a terrible year” wherein the “rain was murder” for his Bing and Rainier varieties, scuttling what had appeared to be a very good crop.

“In 2010 we packed 150,000 pounds. This year we’ve packed a total of 80,000 pounds and were fortunate to get that,” he said.

His story is similar and familiar to most cherry growers in the Stockton/Morada/Linden/Lodi area which is California’s premier cherry producing region: “We picked some but left the majority of the fruit on the trees.”

Quashnick was able, he said, to “pick what’s left of the Rainer’s for the fresh market.” But that was small consolation for what he, and others, lost.


Bings bombed

The very popular Bing variety “was hit the worst. This is the second year in a row that rain has affected harvest and it’s a somber time for the industry,” noted Culbertson.

Ironically, harvest of the late-maturing Bing variety was about a week from being completed when Mother Nature decided to shut down the cherry harvest.

The cherry malaise also affected packing sheds, Culbertson said. “Sheds are struggling, running a lot of fruit but not packing much. Instead of running 80 to 100 bins per hour, they’re only running 20. That’s a good indication of how severely the rains curtailed this crop.”

In 2010, the state produced 8.7 million, 18-pound box equivalents with more than 5.3 million coming from San Joaquin County.

However, 2011 has been a different story, said Culbertson. “To date we’ve shipped 5.5 million boxes statewide and the entire crop might get to 6 million boxes. “

“This is a substantial loss for cherry growers because the rains struck at exactly the wrong time,” said Agricultural Commissioner Scott Hudson. “It hit just as the Bing crop was ripening up. The outcome of harvest depends on when the varieties are ripening and if it rained at that point.”

Hudson said the exact numbers delineating the final depth of the disaster won’t be known for awhile but whatever the figures are “they won’t tell the story of a positive outcome” for the majority of Central Valley cherry growers.

The dearth of cherries created a slow moving, sorting and packing process at Central Valley fruit packing operations, said Tommy Gotelli, of O-G Packing and Cold Storage Co. of Stockton, “This year’s crop was beaten up very badly by rain and some growers were wiped out. I’d say nearly 60 percent of growers didn’t even pick their crop. Those that did pick found that 40 to 60 percent of what they got off their trees was damaged.”

He explained that cherries are a volatile crop because when they’re wet and the weather warms even slightly they will split and crack which completely destroys their market.


Prices good, holding

Joe Valente, San Joaquin Farm Bureau past president and orchard manager for Kautz Farms in Lodi, said that despite the plunge in yield caused by the weather, “The price for cherries is good and it’s holding and this is one of the few bright spots.”

It’s supply and demand at work, as the popularity of cherries is undiminished despite the decrease in the crop’s size with domestic consumers and those in foreign countries still clamoring for cherries.

As bad as the situation is for the industry, Valente said it could have been worse. “For the amount of rain we got the damage was bad but it should have been a wipe-out, it should have ended the season completely.”

But for many growers, their crops were wiped out and the season ended with “some growers just walking away because it was useless to pick,” Valente said.


High demand

The travail experienced by growers was offset somewhat by the high demand for cherries with retailers selling what was available to sell.

“Domestic retailers have done well,” Culbertson said. “And exports did well, too, in particular Japan. We’ll probably ship more to Japan than we did last year.” And this despite the country being ravaged by an earthquake and tidal waves early in 2011.

Early predictions were rendered moot by the weather with crop estimates of at least a “moderate volume” in the Stockton/Morada/Lodi/Linden area with some industry mavens predicting a record yield, one that would surpass 9 million boxes, a wish that was crushed by the miserable June weather.


Published in Local News
Tagged under economy agriculture