The Pacific Northwest’s cherry crop was expected to be a boon for farmers this year. The fruit this season was high quality, and production was up compared to last year. But with a shortage of migrant workers early in the season and then high prices at the grocery store, it was more of a bust.
Now some cherry farmers are figuring out whether to cut their losses.
“All of this fruit tasted really, really good,” said Tiffany Davis, business manager at K&K Land and Management — a labor contractor for orchards based in The Dalles, Ore. The company separately manages nearly 600 acres of cherry orchard. “As far as the way the fruit looked and the way that it showed up in the market, it looked great. And then the market was not there.”
Earlier this summer, the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement kept many migrant farmworkers in California, who usually follow the harvest season, from making their way north to Oregon and Washington. Some were afraid they would get pulled over or arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
By the time enough people made their way up, the harvest window for some cherries had passed, and some of it was left to rot in the field.
But what perhaps contributed to this year’s bust more, Davis said, was an oversupply of fruit and not enough demand for it at the grocery store. This year’s production was forecasted to be up by 4% compared to last year in Oregon. Washington’s was even higher at 29%. Those states are among the top cherry-producing states in the country, alongside California.
It also didn’t help that grocery store prices were stubbornly high and retailers couldn’t respond fast enough to lower them. Davis said she thinks those high prices overall might have also contributed to less demand for the fruit.
“In the economic times that we’re in right now, when a family is going to a grocery store and they’re feeling so pinched for groceries, maybe they can buy their bread and their milk and their basic items,” she said. “They’re not going to buy cherries at $6 to $8 a pound, like that’s not in the budget.”
Davis said she expects to receive less than a dollar per pound for fresh cherries based on the estimate she’s received, but won’t know for sure until around November.
“Some of those estimates are terrifying for our industry,” she said.
Lesley Tamura, chair of the Columbia Gorge Fruit Growers, said most cherry farmers this year will likely not break even.
“They’ll be coming out of this at a loss this year. It’s just a matter of how much when all is said and done,” she said.
Farmers often don’t get much money from the crop they grow, and there’s a reason for that, said Tim Delbridge, an agricultural economist at Oregon State University.
“When there’s too much fruit on the market, you end up seeing lower prices. And that’s at the farm level,” Delbridge said. “You still have all these other expenses, though, with the packing house, with the distributor, with the retailer. Even when the farmers aren’t making a lot of money, you may not see super low prices on the retail shelf.”
Tamura said she suspects some farmers will likely consider how to cut their losses.
“I think people are taking a hard look at the amount of acreage they’re running and going, ‘Is this working? And what can I do to reduce it?’ Whether that means selling parcels, leasing out parcels to other people, letting go of lease…” she said. “There’s different options, but none of them are great.”