Cherries Slowing Down

Cherries Slowing Down. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Fruit Grower Report.

This year’s cherry crop had some really nice weather and that has made quick work of the crop. BJ Thurlby with NW Cherries.

THURLBY: I think we’re closer to 75 to 80% done on this deal. Some of my packers are going to be finishing up this week. They’ll be done for the season and a lot of our different sales desks are down to smaller increments of cherries each day that they need to move versus large lots.

There are some late varieties that are still being picked. The early on estimate of 21-million is still fairly good but Thurlby is optimistic.

THURLBY: I think the crop might end up being a little bit bigger than the estimate. We came in a little long on Rainiers. For instance our estimate on Rainiers was 1/6-1.7million boxes and it looks like it’s going to finish up close to 1.9 million and the real switch there Greg is the pack outs have been so excellent this year. On a normal year you are getting 80% of your cherries going into a box and 20% will go into the diversionary markets whether it’s fruit for yogurt or juice or maraschino’s. But the pack outs have been so high. They’ve been consistently above 90 just about everywhere I’ve gone.

And as far as labor issue for this year’s crop?

THURLBY: It’s been one of those weird years where with California sitting down there with the drought, they’ve had row crop issues there, they had a short cherry crop - we have a little bit more field labor in the area this year and I’ve had growers pretty much tell me that they were able to find the field labor they needed. Now every warehouse in the industry has got a sign out front, we need packers.

That’s today’s Fruit Grower Report. I’m Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.