Cherry growers face smaller crop

Soft fruit growers are facing the prospect of a smaller crop this year following January’s extreme cold event and a spring frost in April.

While the cherry sector will see a crop this year – unlike most other stone fruit growers, including peach and apricot producers – yields will be down significantly.

“We are expecting cherries, but in small volumes,” says Laurel Van Dam, vice-president, grower relations and corporate affairs with BC Tree Fruits Cooperative. “The January deep freeze throughout the valley followed by the April frost on some trees that were already in bloom has significantly lowered the forecasted volume.”

While cold weather has effectively thinned out the crop, allowing the tree to devote energy to sizing up what fruit trees come to bear, volumes will be down.

Van Dam noted that trees also tend to drop fruit prior to harvest, a self-thinning process that channels resources into the best-quality fruit.

“Hopefully that won’t be significant,” she notes.

According to the province, notices of loss to Production Insurance adjusters peg claims from cherry growers at $36 million for this year, nearly triple the $12.3 million paid out last year.

Those losses are related entirely to lost yields.

“The estimates for 2024 losses could change considerably once the extent of the damage and losses can be fully determined later in the growing season,” provincial staff note.

However, the need to support growers has seen $5.4 million paid out to cherry producers this year to date, underscoring the severity of the losses.

“Typically, cherry losses would not be paid this early in the year, however the Ministry of Agriculture and Food has been proactively working with growers and industry associations to expedite claims where possible,” the province says in a statement.

With files from Tom Walker