SE Grand Rapids News

For residents of the northern part of Michigan, cherry growing is a way of life. While some farmers have been growing the crop for generations, their livelihood is in more jeopardy now than maybe it ever has been.

Orchards that once covered the landscape with trees full of cherries are quickly being replaced by large properties with for sale signs on the driveways, according to a story on Bridge Michigan. The publication spoke to Raymond “Rock” Fouch and his son, Nick, who posted a picture on social media of 9 tons of tart cherries they had dumped on the ground. The cherries had originally been intended for processing plants but the orders were canceled, rending the fruit useless.

Not only were cherry farmers hampered by a reduced need of the processors, the plants have also been infested by Asian fruit flies and affected by a fungus that made them unusable for companies that could otherwise use them for juice. Add to that competition from Turkish cherry farmers and the whole thing could spell disaster for a once-blooming industry for state farmers.

Michigan Sen. Kevin Daley (R-Lum) | Kevin Daley's website

Sen. Kevin Daley (R-Lum), who is also chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee, said the issues facing the state’s cherry farmers could be insurmountable if they don’t get the help they need from not only Lansing, but also Washington, D.C.

“We put together a couple of resolutions that are being passed out of the Senate and the House to the federal government urging the president and the government to, you know, get behind the cherry producers in our country and stop the nonsense that’s going on,” he told the SE Grand Rapids News. “I think that the way Mr. Trump realizes what’s going on, our president realizes what’s going on when it comes to tariffs and the way these other countries are not playing fair with our country, I think we might be able to do something with it.”

While there is hope of a solution that will benefit the farmers, Daley said there is nothing that can be done for them right now.

“I think basically what this would be is for these guys whether it’s worth their effort to try and make it through another winter and hang in there and not get out of the business completely,” he said. “I would hate to see the cherry industry go away in our state.”

Daley said there are only five major producers of tart cherries left in the country, and four of them are in Michigan.

“The farmers are pretty resilient when it comes to hanging through things, but when you get a whole bunch dumped on them with the weather and everything that happened this year to cause this fungus, everything adds up and it gets to the point where my understanding is there’s been a lot of cherry trees pulled up already,” he said.

According to the Bridge story, Turkish imports first started arriving in 2012 after a frost wiped out most of the American crop. The amount of cherries being imported more than tripled to 686 metric tons between 2016 and 2018 alone. The Department of Commerce is now investigating whether subsidies and trade policies by Turkey are having an adverse effect on American growers, according to the Bridge. The results of that investigation are expected to be released later this month.  

Whether the industry can rebound from its current crop of challenges remains to be seen, but according to the Bridge article, many farmers are already looking at ways to either get out of the farm industry entirely or diversify their fields to protect their profits for the future.