The U.S. cherry industry’s greatest success—lengthening the season and increasing volume—is also one of its biggest challenges. Cherries remain one of the few truly seasonal products in the fresh produce section, and therein lies the rub: despite the limited timeframe, shippers work very hard to attract, and more importantly retain, customers during the all-too-brief season.
“We need consumers to come back and repurchase cherries,” states Jon Bailey, who manages Oregon cherry shipments for The Oppenheimer Group, headquartered in Vancouver, British Columbia. “If they get a bad cherry early in the season, we may not see them again until Bings come in.”
The earliest cherries come out of Southern California in late spring (mid-April) and the season can extend to the end of August with Bing harvests in Washington’s higher elevations. With such a short window for harvesting and shipping, quality is paramount.
Challenges: Old and New
Getting cherries from the orchard to store shelves in peak form and flavor has never been easy. Fortunately, new equipment is speeding up the process of sorting cherries. Originally used with Washington’s premium yellow cherry variety, Rainier, optical laser sorters are helping growers throughout the Pacific Coast.
“We used to call optical sorters ‘Rainier packing equipment’—now we’re treating red fruit like Rainiers,” comments Scott Brown of Morada Produce Company L.P. in Linden, CA. The technology has proven a welcome addition to packinghouses; Brown says an optical sorting line can pack 20 tons of cherries per hour.
While optical sorters vastly improve pack quality, it’s impossible to eliminate all variability. “There are still things inside a cherry,” concedes Steve Lutz, vice president for marketing at Columbia Marketing International, Inc. in Wenatchee, WA, “that even today’s best technology can’t detect.” This, in turn, leads to another ongoing industry challenge: food safety.
The implementation of several Food Safety Modernization Act rules this year will certainly impact Northwest grower-shippers, wholesalers, and importers. Bailey believes some of the older or smaller orchards could decide to exit production because of the changes and additional paperwork.
Other struggles include labor, water, and the El Nino-influenced weather. High-tech equipment can help with labor shortages, but skilled workers are still needed during harvest and packing. California raised its state minimum wage again, which either helps or hinders produce companies, depending on your point of view. Wages are certainly part of the equation, but the dearth of workers remains a thorny issue for grower-shippers.
Water is also top of mind, with the current El Nino weather pattern lending a hand. “We had a positive winter, but it’s going to take three steady years of rain to bring the water supply back up,” states Paul Poutre, general manager of Delta Packing Company of Lodi, Inc.
Temperature is an issue as well for perfect cherries: too few winter chill hours can delay trees from coming out of dormancy and budding. Late winter temperatures, below 20°F at bud break, can wreck a crop. Spring temperatures in the high 70s, or prolonged exposure to temperatures below the mid-50s, can hamper cherry bloom. “When you have erratic weather in the winter, we need to do everything possible in the packing sheds to maintain quality,” asserts Morada’s Brown.
Kicking Off the Season: California
Good weather boosted California’s cherry harvests back up in 2015 after dismal production in 2014. Last year’s 68,000 tons was a welcome increase after too few winter chill hours resulted in a 40,000-ton harvest in 2014. Dick Reiman, a 29-year cherry veteran and president of River City Produce Sales in Sacramento, lauded 2015 as “one of the better years for the California cherry deal.”
The U.S. cherry industry’s greatest success—lengthening the season and increasing volume—is also one of its biggest challenges. Cherries remain one of the few truly seasonal products in the fresh produce section, and therein lies the rub: despite the limited timeframe, shippers work very hard to attract, and more importantly retain, customers during the all-too-brief season.
“We need consumers to come back and repurchase cherries,” states Jon Bailey, who manages Oregon cherry shipments for The Oppenheimer Group, headquartered in Vancouver, British Columbia. “If they get a bad cherry early in the season, we may not see them again until Bings come in.”
The earliest cherries come out of Southern California in late spring (mid-April) and the season can extend to the end of August with Bing harvests in Washington’s higher elevations. With such a short window for harvesting and shipping, quality is paramount.
Challenges: Old and New
Getting cherries from the orchard to store shelves in peak form and flavor has never been easy. Fortunately, new equipment is speeding up the process of sorting cherries. Originally used with Washington’s premium yellow cherry variety, Rainier, optical laser sorters are helping growers throughout the Pacific Coast.
“We used to call optical sorters ‘Rainier packing equipment’—now we’re treating red fruit like Rainiers,” comments Scott Brown of Morada Produce Company L.P. in Linden, CA. The technology has proven a welcome addition to packinghouses; Brown says an optical sorting line can pack 20 tons of cherries per hour.
While optical sorters vastly improve pack quality, it’s impossible to eliminate all variability. “There are still things inside a cherry,” concedes Steve Lutz, vice president for marketing at Columbia Marketing International, Inc. in Wenatchee, WA, “that even today’s best technology can’t detect.” This, in turn, leads to another ongoing industry challenge: food safety.
The implementation of several Food Safety Modernization Act rules this year will certainly impact Northwest grower-shippers, wholesalers, and importers. Bailey believes some of the older or smaller orchards could decide to exit production because of the changes and additional paperwork.
Other struggles include labor, water, and the El Nino-influenced weather. High-tech equipment can help with labor shortages, but skilled workers are still needed during harvest and packing. California raised its state minimum wage again, which either helps or hinders produce companies, depending on your point of view. Wages are certainly part of the equation, but the dearth of workers remains a thorny issue for grower-shippers.
Water is also top of mind, with the current El Nino weather pattern lending a hand. “We had a positive winter, but it’s going to take three steady years of rain to bring the water supply back up,” states Paul Poutre, general manager of Delta Packing Company of Lodi, Inc.
Temperature is an issue as well for perfect cherries: too few winter chill hours can delay trees from coming out of dormancy and budding. Late winter temperatures, below 20°F at bud break, can wreck a crop. Spring temperatures in the high 70s, or prolonged exposure to temperatures below the mid-50s, can hamper cherry bloom. “When you have erratic weather in the winter, we need to do everything possible in the packing sheds to maintain quality,” asserts Morada’s Brown.
Kicking Off the Season: California
Good weather boosted California’s cherry harvests back up in 2015 after dismal production in 2014. Last year’s 68,000 tons was a welcome increase after too few winter chill hours resulted in a 40,000-ton harvest in 2014. Dick Reiman, a 29-year cherry veteran and president of River City Produce Sales in Sacramento, lauded 2015 as “one of the better years for the California cherry deal.”
Harvests usually begin in mid-April in Kern County, where low-chill varieties like Brooks and Tulare are most prominent. Mike Jameson, director of marketing at Morada Produce Company, says the Coral variety is replacing some of the Brooks and Tulare plantings, especially around Bakersfield. “Coral takes about half the chill hours,” he says, which is a benefit over Brooks and Tulare, especially in the South Valley. Coral also has an improved shelf-life over the older varieties. “Coral is a meatier piece of fruit that just travels well. It has become desirable both domestically and internationally,” Jameson says.
Cherry growers north toward Fresno and west to Gilroy and Hollister are also cultivating more Coral cherries. “On the west side of the valley, we’re seeing a lot of grafting to Coral. There’s also grafting to the Royal varieties Tenaya, Tioga, and Hazel,” says Morada.
WHAT’S IN A NAME?
In cherry lore, the Lewelling name is royalty. Brothers Henderson and Seth Lewelling are responsible for three of the top cherry varieties that endure today. Both Lewellings had been living in Iowa in the 1800s and traveled the Oregon Trail to the Pacific Coast. Henderson brought fruit tree stock across the country, creating a nursery by the Columbia River in Willamette Valley.
Though few cherry consumers know Seth’s name, buyers worldwide know the name of his Chinese farm foreman, ‘Bing,’ after whom he named a promising cherry tree in the 1860s. Nearly two-thirds of all sweet cherries grown and sold today are Bings. Two other major Northwest cherry varieties, the ‘Royal Ann’ and ‘Lambert’ were bred and christened by Henderson.
The Lewelling brothers, along with other settlers, built a thriving sweet cherry industry in Oregon, Washington, and California by the late 1800s and early 1900s. The dry summer climate proved ideal for fruit quality, while winters with few prolonged periods below freezing provided the chilling hours needed for proper tree dormancy.
California’s Bing and Rainier acreage is centered farther north, around Stockton and Linden, where there’s a better chance for the longer chill hours required by these varieties. In addition, cherry orchards are larger, on average, in California than in its Pacific Northwest neighbors. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), more than 100 California producers had 100-plus acre orchards back in 2012—a higher number of big cherry growers than in Washington and Oregon combined. A more recent USDA study on organics, from 2014, counted 300 acres of organic sweet cherries in California.
The bad news for organic cherry growers, says Poutre, is “more insect pressure.” The better news, however, is “demand for organics is very good. Our team is trying to encourage growers to take a look at it.”
In early 2016, higher-than-average chill hours and good winter moisture conditions boded well for California’s current cherry crop. “As long as we had the cold hours, we’ll have plenty to sell,” predicts Reiman.
Traveling North: Oregon
Like California and Washington, Oregon had a challenging 2015 season. “Due to the freeze damage in November 2014, our production here in Oregon was greatly reduced,” comments Oppenheimer Group’s Bailey, who works with Orchard Valley Farms, in The Dalles.
The freeze affected about 40 percent of The Dalles’ cherry trees. The two other cherry production areas are Hood River and the Milton-Freewater region. Milton-Freewater, in Umatilla County, reported a total crop loss in 2015, due to the November freeze. Oregon’s total production for 2015 was down by a quarter, shipping about 41,000 tons in 2015.
Bings are the mainstay, but acreage includes early season Chelan cherries and later maturing Regina, Lapin, Sweetheart, and Skeena varieties. “We see Skeena growing,” posits Bailey. “It’s a good, solid cherry,” he adds, noting Skeena is usually preferred over Sweethearts for late-season air shipments to Asia. “The Chinese market prefers the flavor and overall eating quality of Skeena over the Sweetheart,” he says.
Fortunately for the Beaver State’s growers, many trees damaged by freezing temperatures in 2014 came back in 2015.
“We lost some trees, maybe 10 to 15 percent of trees in The Dalles,” confirms Bailey. But the outlook for 2016’s crop is positive. “The trees are responding, and we expect an 80 to 90 percent crop (at Orchard View Farms) this year,” he says. In anticipation of the harvest, Orchard View is installing a new Unitech packing line with optical sorting equipment—48 lanes—the world’s largest to date, according to Bailey.
Far North Finish: Washington
Cherries are Washington’s fifth most valuable crop behind apples, wheat, hay, and potatoes. The sweet cherry harvest occurs in three areas, east of the Cascade Mountains: the Yakima Valley, Wenatchee (North Central), and the Columbia Basin.
Lower elevations, in the Yakima and Columbia regions, bloom and mature earlier. Higher elevations, like those around Wenatchee and the top of the Yakima Valley, bloom later.
FACTS & FIGURES
California, Oregon, and Washington produce more than 90 percent of U.S. sweet cherries, reaching 320,000 tons in 2015 according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). Sweet cherries from Oregon (41,000 tons in 2015) and Washington (210,000 tons) are the Northwest’s second most valuable fruit, after apples. California’s sweet cherry crop, about 68,000 tons in 2015, rivals the value of the state’s other tree fruits, like nectarines and peaches.
Michigan, Montana, and Idaho ship some fresh sweet cherries as well, but Michigan tops the chart for tart cherries, primarily used for baking and processing. Traverse City, MI also claims to be the “Cherry Capital of the World” and hosts the National Cherry Festival each year, a weeklong celebration held in July.
Although average annual per capita consumption of sweet cherries peaked in 2006 at about 1.6 pounds per person, more recent figures from the USDA’s Economic Research Service find consumption down a bit, but fluctuating between 1.0 and 1.5 pounds each year.
The 2015 Washington cherry season was full of surprises. “It was one of the earliest bloom dates in industry history,” says Columbia Marketing’s Lutz. “We shipped cherries before the end of May, earlier than normal.”
Washington cherry shipments usually start in June and end in August. Chelan is the earliest major variety, followed by Tieton; Rainier and Bing harvests begin in mid-June, with Bings then extending
to early August. Late-season cherries in Washington mature a week or more after Bing: Lapin, which is rapidly replacing the late-season Lambert, is first, followed by Skeena. The final cherry to be harvested is the Sweetheart.
Craig Campbell, chief executive officer at CDS Distributing, Inc., says the early cherry bloom wasn’t the only surprise last year. “We were done shipping cherries by the third week of July,” he explains. As a producer of late-season Sweetheart cherries on 30 acres in the Yakima Valley near Tieton at an elevation of 2,000 feet, he says, “I don’t ever recall a season this early.”
Ron Everts of Borton & Sons, Inc. in Yakima says this year’s winter had ample snow but no below-zero or single-digit temperatures in the company’s growing areas through late February. In turn, there weren’t worries about bud and tree damage like last year. Borton & Sons also had high hopes for a few early midseason varieties, or those that ripen before Bings.
“We have some younger cherry orchards growing Benton, Cristalina, and Coral Champagne cherries,” notes Eric Borton, vice president of international sales and marketing. The company expects these varieties to produce both “higher yields and better quality in the coming seasons,” he says.
Washington is also the leading organic cherry grower, with 1,400 acres on 80 different farms, producing more than 8,000 tons according to a 2014 USDA survey. Organic or conventional, however, labor availability remains the state’s biggest hurdle, especially as volume climbs with new higher-density orchards. “Trellised orchards are very productive,” Campbell says, noting most of the newer plantings are early varieties.
Future Outlook
Shippers are confident improvements in packing technology and continued U.S. retail demand will sustain increasing volumes. Lutz points to the success of the retail pouch with both retailers and consumers, and single-serve cherry packs, targeted for the convenience market, are also gaining popularity.
As far as demand outside the United States, exports accounted for about 28 percent of the 2015 crop, according to USDA trade and production data through September. Next to Canada (accounting for 35 percent of 2015 exports), South Korea is the next biggest destination for Northwest cherries (17 percent), though China is in growth mode. The value of U.S. cherry exports to China increased from $40 million in 2012 to $65 million in 2015. There is also growth in shipping to Vietnam, Thailand, the Philippines, and Indonesia.
While the latter countries are not large markets, says Bailey, nevertheless, “they are growing.” Brazil is another small but strategic market for cherry sales. “Brazil doesn’t take a lot of fruit, but they’re willing to pay for high quality,” he says.
Chile is currently the world’s largest cherry exporter, with shipments to China increasing as Chilean production increases. Turkey is also a major exporter, with shipments to Russia and Iraq projected to increase for the coming 2015-16 season, according to the USDA’s Foreign Agricultural Service.
With continual improvement in quality and volume, the U.S. fresh cherry industry is well positioned to meet the requirements of both domestic and global markets. A rare gem among today’s ever-increasing assortment of fruit and vegetables, retail stores and shoppers alike hope Lutz’s forecast for “a larger crop, both earlier and later” in the season will ring true this year and going forward.
