Researchers link cherry production, climate

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For many farmers, the worst parts of the job are the things they can’t control, and often, the biggest problem is weather.

Most of Michigan’s biggest agricultural industries, such as corn, are relatively resistant to changes in weather, said Julie Winkler, a professor of geography. But the state’s tart cherry industry, which has secured 70 percent of the nation’s market, doesn’t have the same weather-resistant luxury, she said.

That’s why Winkler and her fellow MSU researchers are trying to help the industry better prepare for Mother Nature.

Winkler is the principal researcher for a project funded by a $1.5 million grant from the National Science Foundation to examine how climate affects cherry crops and how that affects the international cherry market.

“When you look at most industries that have international components to them, it isn’t enough to look at how one area might be affected by climate variability and change,” she said. “You also have to look at other production areas as well to understand the impact on an industry.”

This research is some of the first of its kind in the country, Winkler said.

Cherries have been a headache for investors, both because of the volatile weather and because cherry trees often take a long time to mature and produce significant yields, said J. Roy Black, a professor at the Department of Agricultural, Food and Resource Economics who also is involved in the project.

“You plant it today, it’s going to be six to seven years before it starts to yield anything,” Black said. “Twelve (years) before it peaks and then you have a period of peak production. In 22-23 years that production starts to drop off and in 27-28 years you start this process all over.”

The market volatility showed itself in 2002, when the state’s entire crop was wiped out and orchards were left with only what they had reserved from the year before, Winkler said.

To meet demands, many orchards in the state began importing tart cherries from countries in Europe such as Poland, Germany and Ukraine.

When the wipeout occurred, Tim Brian, president of Smeltzer Orchards in Frankfort, Mich., said his company needed to purchase cherries from growers in Poland to meet demand.

“We didn’t harvest a local cherry in our area that year,” he said. “You just can’t turn the market on and off like a switch.”

The state’s cherry market has rebounded since 2002, but the foreign presence still remains, Brian said.

“It opened the doors for the Polish cherries to come in to the U.S. and Canada and there’s actually some customers that are still using Polish cherries,” he said. “There’s a couple isolated cases where the Polish cherry actually worked better in (the customers’) product and they have stayed with it.”

The group’s findings could help better prepare local farmers for weather shifts, as well as predict the need, if any, for foreign growers, Black said.

“Step one is: What does the future hold for climate change?” he said. “Step two is: Can we translate that into yield per tree or yield per acre? And step three is: What does that mean in terms of incentives for cherry growers and the cherry supply chain?”

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