2020 should have been disastrous for northern Michigan cherry growers, between a late freeze, massive rainstorms, ongoing problems with foreign imports, and labor challenges with the global pandemic. Even with those conditions, though, Leelanau farmers say 2020 marked an improvement of fortunes. To kick off February — National Cherry Month — we’re checking with local growers to see what keeps them up at night (hint: add an insidious fruit fly to the mix) and what the future holds for the county’s cherry industry.

Second-generation cherry farmer Ben LaCross, who is the manager of farming operations for Leelanau Fruit Co., and the District 9 director for the Michigan Farm Bureau, tells the Leelanau Ticker, “Cherry farmers had an okay year in 2020. Considering the past five years that we've lived through, ‘okay’ is pretty good.”

The local tart cherry crop was small, he explains, which “did help increase grower pricing on the tart cherry side. And there was pretty high demand for tart cherries, specifically for cherry pie fill. People did a lot more in-home cooking and in-home baking and made a lot more cherry pies in 2020 than they have in a long time. That really pushed pricing.”

Mark Miezio, president of the Suttons Bay-based Cherry Bay Orchards, agrees with LaCross’s assessment. He says northern Michigan’s short tart cherry crop drove scarcity on the national level, which ultimately pushed prices from 15 cents a pound in 2019 to “the 40 to 50 cents range” in 2020.

But decent pricing was something of a band-aid for cherry farmers in 2020, as they continued to weather other crises on all sides. Of those issues, the elephant in the room continues to be foreign trade.

Countries like Turkey and Serbia have disrupted the domestic cherry market by flooding it with cheap product, particularly in the categories of cherry juice and dried cherries. Heavy government subsidies in both countries allow farmers to undercut the domestic price point when selling into the United States — a practice known as “dumping.” Dumping, while technically legal under World Trade Organization rules, can be penalized with countervailing duties if a country’s domestic producers — in this case, U.S. cherry farmers – can prove the practice is hurting their industry.  

Five American dried cherry producers – including two from Traverse City and two from Frankfort – petitioned the Department of Commerce (DOC) and the International Trade Commission (ITC) to investigate Turkey for allegedly harmful dumping practices. In 2019, the DOC sided with the petitioners, ruling that Turkey was undercutting fair market value on dried cherries by as much as 648.35 percent. But a big blow came a year ago this January, when the ITC ruled that the U.S. cherry industry had not been “materially injured” by Turkish dumping, thus eliminating the preliminary tariffs the DOC had imposed.

It hasn’t been all bad news on the trade front. The government placed small tariffs on Turkish tart cherry juice imports several years ago, and then took steps to enforce the spirit of those tariffs when Turkish growers started transshipping their product through intermediary countries like Brazil. Still, LaCross says it falls to the cherry growers themselves to monitor the board and play this game of “import whack-a-mole,” thus drawing attention away from things like research and development, marketing and promotion, or simply growing quality crops.

And growers say the other existential threat to the northern Michigan cherry industry is an invasive pest called the spotted wing drosophila (SWD). A type of fruit fly, SWD is unlike its relatives, which lay eggs on over-ripe or rotting fruit. SWD goes for fresh, just-ripening fruit — often before harvest — including cherry, strawberry, blackberry, blueberry, raspberry, and grape crops. SWD has been in Michigan since 2010, but Miezio says the problem has worsened.

 “The anecdote from last year was that, on the Friday before Fourth of July weekend, everything was good in the orchard,” Miezio recalls. “We came back in on Monday or Tuesday the following week and there was a complete infestation. Nothing was salvageable from an entire block of fruit.”

Because of SWD, Miezio says local fruit farmers have had to get smarter and more deliberate about everything from scheduling insecticide applications to planning harvest windows. The best remedy of all? Increased manpower.

“We used to have 2-3 guys on our spray team [for pesticides and insecticides], and they would keep up with all the things that needed to happen,” Miezio says. “This past season, we had six people on our spray team to make sure we were staying protected.”

That extra need for workers is putting pressure on an already-strained labor system. Most growers rely on migrant labor from the H-2A visa program. Getting those workers to northern Michigan, given regulatory hurdles and limited housing availability, was a challenge for cherry growers even before COVID-19. Now, with quarantine requirements and other safety protocols to consider, the process is even more of a hurdle. With SWD, though, Miezio says having those H-2A workers is vital: they’re not just tending to the crops and driving the harvesting process; they’re also holding SWD at bay to make sure farmers “have a crop that we can harvest.”

Despite the challenges, both Miezio and LaCross are optimistic about the short and long-term future of the northern Michigan cherry industry. After a mild start to the winter, Miezio says weather conditions are now cold and snowy enough to keep the cherry trees dormant and pave the way for a strong 2021 season. And despite foreign competitors and other challenges, LaCross says northern Michigan still has an ace up its sleeve that no one else has.

“I’m very proud that our region is the ‘Cherry Capital of the World,’” LaCross says. “I'm proud that our hometown throws a party for the fruit that we grow. Agriculture in general goes through peaks and valleys, but the one thing that we need to remember is that agriculture helps retain the charm and the importance of our rural communities. If our small towns in northwest Michigan don’t have a thriving cherry industry, some of the character of those small towns will be lost."