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Spring frost hurt Michigan’s fruit crops

By SHELLY STRAUTZ-SPRINGBORN
Michigan Correspondent

LANSING, Mich. — Weather is being blamed for souring Michigan’s cherry and apple crops this year.

Terry Anderson, owner of Anderson & Girls Orchards near Stanton, said a long, cool bloom period this spring followed by late-May frosts caused extensive damage to his farm’s apple crop and destroyed its cherries.

“I’m hearing from growers all over that the apple crop in Michigan is about half of what it normally would be,” Anderson said. “There’s always a June drop in apples, and this year it was big.

“Certain varieties are real good, but some are real short. Red Delicious, Galas and Empires are pretty short. Macintosh, Jonathans, Golden Delicious and Ida Reds seem to be fine.
“We don’t have any sweet cherries at all. Ours froze completely,” he said.

While some areas also have experienced harsh storms and hail, Anderson said he and his family have fared pretty well.
“We’ve been lucky here. Michigan has had all this erratic weather – big storms, wind, hail – but we haven’t had much of that. We’ve had storms, but we haven’t had any hail,” he said.

Mark Ravell, who grows about 100 acres of apples near Fenwick, said his farm, like others throughout much of western and central Michigan “has been hit pretty hard with hail. Most growers I know have been hit with at least some hail.”

He estimated his apple crop will be about 50 percent this year. “We had a lot of early and late frost that affected the apples, and we had a very heavy June drop,” Ravell said.

Frost in April, followed by severe frosts in late May, caused the Michigan Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Assoc.’s (MACMA) Apple Division to lower its yield expectations for this growing season. In June, MACMA estimated the state’s apple production at 14.5 million bushels, down from an average of 20 million, according to Apple Division Manager Dawn Drake. “This is the worst we’ve seen it in a number of years,” she said, adding that Red Delicious, the state’s top variety, were the hardest hit, followed by Gala.

Even so, Michigan’s problems are minor compared to New York, said Drake, where severe hail in mid-June damaged half of the crop in Wayne County – the second largest apple-producing county in the nation and home to half of New York’s entire apple crop.
All things considered, Drake said “demand will definitely exceed supply,” so consumers should be prepared to pay more for U.S.-grown apples, especially considering the costly freight charges involved to ship apples from Washington, the leading apple-producing state, to other parts of the country.

Anderson said this could be one time that high fuel costs work in favor of Michigan growers. “With the cost of fuel, it has made their apples more expensive and our apples more competitive,” he said of growers outside of Michigan.

Ravell also expects to see higher prices going into harvest.
“I’m sure the prices are going to be fairly good. It never fails, when you have a short crop, the prices seem to go up,” he said.

Frost also is to blame for Michigan’s problems with its tart and sweet cherry crops this year. Michigan leads the nation in the production of tart cherries, producing about 75 percent of the country’s total crop. However, the USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service forecast this year’s Michigan tart cherry production at 135 million pounds, 30 percent below last year’s 193 million.
“Last year the Northwest region alone produced 132 million pounds” of tart cherries, said Phil Korson, president of the Cherry Marketing Institute and executive director of the Michigan Cherry Committee. “This will be the shortest crop since 2002.”

Like 2002, frost is mostly to blame for this year’s problems, according to Korson. Late-May frosts “literally froze cherries on the tree,” he said, adding that recent hail also caused damage but on a more “spotty” basis.

Fortunately, he said there are enough tart cherries reserved in inventory to meet consumer demand, but people should expect higher prices due to the shortfall.

7/23/2008