Bad weather, disease and trade troubles hit Michigan cherry farmers

Yahoo

15 hours ago

STORY: Don Gallagher is driving through his cherry tree orchard in Michigan.
Most of these trees have been harvested, but Don and his family are out one bright day to pick what's still on the branches so they can stock a farm stand.
The fruit sold quickly.
Here's his daughter.
"This morning we put out 24 quarts, and we're down to six quarts."
It's a bit of bright news in otherwise hard times.
A cold snap in late April bit hard.
'Oh it got so extremely cold... we lost three quarters of our dark sweets, half of our briners, and all of our sour cherries, tart cherries.'
Trump-era cuts have hit rural services, from farmworker visa processing to agricultural research.
One family farm here hires part of their farm labor crew from Guatemala.
The crew arrived short-handed and weeks into harvest, because the process of securing their federally-approved H-2A agricultural worker visas in Guatemala City was delayed.
Producers say a U.S. Postal Service reorganization is moving fresh fruit boxes slower to some customers. So farmers are paying more to send them through private carriers.
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A local grower's federal grant for building a new chiller is in limbo, and scientists are not sure if they'll receive grant reimbursement for research into cherry diseases that growers rely - given Washington's funding cuts to universities and USDA programs.
It's all squeezing the $227 million U.S. tart cherry industry hard.
'It's just hard to be a farmer. And that's it.'
Between bad weather, plant disease, and pests, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has forecast that Michigan will lose 41% of its tart cherry crop this year, compared to last season.
USDA expects northwest Michigan to show the state's sharpest year-over-year decline, in the state's smallest crop since 2021.
Emily Miezio owns Cherry Bay Orchards.
'I'm going to say that we're about 40 percent of what we had last year. There are growers in this area that are not harvesting anything on their farms.'
Traverse City, Michigan, calls itself the "Cherry Capital of the World."
On the city's northern edge is the Northwest Michigan Horticulture Research Center, a 137-acre test farm.
"We do horticulture research, entomological research and plant pathology..."
Run by Michigan State University and funded by USDA grants and grower money, it's where Dr. Nikki Rothwell has spent more than two decades helping orchards thrive.
"I would say that our little research station is probably... You know, I don't want to say it's a lifeline, but it is a lifeline for a lot of our growers to figure out kind of how to manage their crops on a daily basis."
When researchers here fired up the tree shaker, a rust-colored cloud fell with the fruit and leaves: brown rot spores, thick as flour dust.
Rothwell's research into the disease is meant to help growers around here keep their fruit trees from failing.
She's unsure if the Trump administration will continue to fund it.
This month, she's submitting final paperwork for a $100,000 USDA grant awarded under the Biden administration for a climate-related disease study.
It's money that's now under a federal review of climate-related research. She said colleagues at other land-grant schools haven't been paid.
Worries over an immigration crackdown have hurt the harvest, too.
One grower in Oregon told Reuters he could only hire 47 farm workers at the beginning of harvest in June, when he needed 120.
He blamed ICE raids in California for scaring away workers.
He said he watched half a million pounds of cherries rot on the trees because he couldn't get enough farm labor.
White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson told Reuters President Donald Trump is committed to ensuring farmers have the workforce they need, but said there will be no safe harbor for 'criminal illegal immigrants.'
She noted the Labor Department last month created a temporary Office of Immigration Policy to help employers navigate foreign labor certification programs.
And then, there's the shrinking exports.
U.S. Census Bureau trade data shows that last year, the U.S. exported nearly $506 million in fresh cherries.
In the first half of this year, as President Donald Trump's trade wars reignited, U.S. fresh fruit exports fell 17% in volume and 15% in value.
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