KENNEWICK — An unusually hot summer didn’t stop Northwest growers from hand-picking their largest-ever sweet cherry crop this year.
Workers harvested more than 23.2 million 20-pound boxes of cherries this summer, just a smidgen above the record set in 2012, according to the Yakima-based Washington State Fruit Commission.
The quality of the cherries this year helped sell the large crop from Oregon, Idaho, Montana and Utah, said James Michael, the commission’s vice president of marketing.
“This was probably one of the best years for quality that we’ve seen for awhile,” Michael said. “Repeat purchases were up significantly, which was a key to success. Even our earliest of the early varieties were impressive, and that made for a clear distinction on the shelf as retailers transitioned from the end-of-season Californian cherries.”
Washington is the nation’s top producer of sweet cherries and grows about 80 percent of the sweet cherries in the Northwest.
Washington and Oregon alone harvested about 21.6 million boxes of sweet cherries this year, about 328,700 more than the previous record set in 2012, said Jon DeVaney, president of the Washington State Tree Fruit Association. That includes 20-pound boxes of dark sweet cherries such as Bing and 15-pound boxes of Rainier cherries.
This year’s harvest was up by 61 percent from last year’s Washington and Oregon crop of about 13.4 million boxes. Sporadic, spotty rain hit orchards hard in the lower Yakima Valley and Columbia Basin last year, cutting into a crop that growers already expected to be smaller than 2012. Some farmers lost most of their crop to rain, wind and hail.
Extreme heat challenged growers this year, as they tried to keep workers and crops cool, Michael said. July was steadily hot, with two heat waves of days above 100 degrees.
Northwest growers had their biggest June ever, with about 10 million boxes of fresh cherries shipped before July 1, Michael said. That was more than 40 percent of this year’s crop.
“After the later starts of the past few seasons, this was a very welcome return by growers, retailers and consumers alike,” he said.
They had a 33-day streak between June 16 and July 18 where an average of more than 500,000 boxes were shipped each day, Michael said. The first and previous record was 13 days in 2009.
The most cherries shipped in one day was more than 655,300 boxes on July 11, which coincidentally is National Rainier Cherry Day, Michael said. It was the most shipped on a single day in the industry’s history.
The Northwest sent 32 percent of the cherry crop to other countries this year, Michael said. The top customers were Canada, Korea, China and Hong Kong.
“The growth in the export markets has been a strong investment for the growers, and innovative programs like partnerships with online retailers continue to open new avenues of distribution,” he said.
Officials will spend the next few months reviewing the data collected during this year’s harvest to help update the research needs of the growing industry, Michael said.
Recent research showing the health benefits of sweet cherries, including that they are a natural anti-inflammatory, has helped draw in more customers for the crop, Michael said.
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