Northwest Growers Lose Millions of Pounds of Cherries During Heatwave
It’s cherry hot out here. Ashley Thompson, Assistant Professor of Horticulture at Oregon State University measuring the internal temperature of a cherry during the June heatwave.
2021 was a tough year for Northwest Cherry Growers.
Millions of cherries were lost this year due to a scorching nine-day heatwave in June.
As of July 28th, Northwest orchardists had produced 17.6 million 20-pound boxes of cherries. That’s 2.2 million fewer boxes and 44 million pounds less than what was produced in 2020. And 8.8 million fewer boxes compared to the most recent banner year of 2017.
Northwest Cherry grower data comes from growers in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Utah, and Montana.
In Wasco County where there are approximately 10,000 acres of cherry orchards, about 4,000 acres reported some damage to their crop due to heat. Hood River County and Parkdale fared slightly better because of climate differences.
“It’s been a hard year for the growers. We had some labor shortages early on because California’s harvest went later than usual, then we had several rain events that were scary, thankfully those events didn’t do too much damage to the crop. And then we had this heat event that really did damage to the crop,” said Ashley Thompson, Assistant Professor of Horticulture at Oregon State University.
The Northwest’s harvest season was also relatively short this year, running from the last week of May to the third week of July.
“It was a really compressed harvest. We started picking the last week in May and then we were effectively done about a week early,” said Thompson.
A graph from Northwest Cherry Growers showing cherry harvest yields in recent years.
California Crop Boom Meant Local Labor Shortage, Average Grocery Store Prices
Other challenges faced by local orchardists this year included labor shortages, cherry prices holding at an average rate despite local losses, and a shorter harvest season.
California’s harvest was larger and went longer than usual this year, meaning fewer migrant workers were available to pick early fruiting cherry varieties. California produced approximately 9.7 million boxes of cherries in 2021. The boom balanced out the losses experienced by Northwest farmers and so prices stayed relatively average for cherries this year, ranging from $4.99/lb to $17/lb in US grocery stores.
“Growers have to get about fifty to fifty-five cents per pound to break even,” said Thompson.
Historic Heat Event Caused Losses
“We had nine days of extreme heat starting in June, and that’s not even counting those really warm days in May,” said Thompson. “We had three record-breaking days in a row. It was 109 F, 114 F, and 118F. 118F was the highest recorded temperature recorded on 6/28/2021.”
“We stopped harvesting fruit when it reached about 90 degrees Fahrenheit,” said Thompson “At around 90 your fruit starts to lose water, and then it loses firmness.”
Excessive heat hurts cherries in a number of ways.
Excessive heat can cause cherries to lose their firmness. Hot cherries become mushy, bruise easily, and can get squashed during handling and transportation. The heat can also cause cherry fruit ‘pitting’, and sunburn.
While a mild sunburn on your fruit might not seem like a big deal to some. It is a big deal for cherry growers. Sunburned cherries can not be picked or sold because the ‘sunburn’ on the fruit kicks off a process of chemical breakdown which makes it impossible to transport and sell in a grocery store.
“Sunburned cherries don’t hold very well in storage. They’re going to be mushy. They have all this breakdown occurring, so they’re not going to taste good. And they might develop secondary infections from fungus,” said Thompson.
The heat also affected the cherry trees themselves.
“At about 98 degrees Fahrenheit the tree also starts to struggle. We call it shutting down,” said Thompson.
When the tree shuts down, it stops growing, it struggles to retain water, and the tree becomes increasingly heat stressed.
The heatwave didn’t affect all orchardists equally.
Those with more early fruiting cherry varieties did better than those with more late fruiting varieties.
“If you had a lot of early varieties, you did pretty well. If you had a lot of late varieties, you had more problems,” said Thompson. “Some people had a pretty normal harvest, it really just depends.”
Different varieties of cherries bear fruit at different points in the harvest season. Having a mix of early and late fruiting varieties allows orchardists to stagger their harvest and offers security in case one variety does poorly.
Early fruiting cherry varieties such Chelan and Suite Note did well this year, whereas late fruiting varieties such as Skeenas, Lapins, and Sweethearts performed poorly in the heat.
“If you had a lot of Skeena, you likely weren’t able to pick any of them this year,” said Thompson. “People that had a lot of Bings were also having problems. Bings weren’t sizing and they weren’t getting color.
Graph from OSU showing different cherry varieties comparative harvest dates.
Ashley Thompson, Assistant Professor of Horticulture at Oregon State University, at work in the orchard. Thompson works with local agricultural organizations to perform agricultural research, help farmers diagnose disease and collect survey data. “I love working with farmers and have always had an interest in plants and soil,” said Thompson.
Climate Change and Cherry Harvest
Historic heat events, droughts, and changing climates may change the way cherry orchardists farm in the future.
“This is likely not a once-in-a-lifetime event, unfortunately,” said Thompson “So we need to start thinking long-term about what cherry varieties will perform best as the climate continues to warm.”
But unlike annual crops, perennial crops like fruit trees can take several years to produce fruit from the time of planting. This requires orchardists to do long-term planning and make especially careful decisions regarding which varieties they plant.
“Because we're in a perennial cropping system it’s really difficult to make fast changes,” said Thompson. “I think we need to look at what varieties, what training systems, and what rootstocks did really well this year, and we might need to make long-term changes using that information.”
A graph from Northwest Cherry Growers measuring over two decades worth of cherry crop yields.
