05/11/05 Marketing a record setting cherry crop

05/11/05 Marketing a record setting cherry crop

Barring a weather or frost related setback, initial projections for this year's Northwest cherry crop could reach as high as twelve million boxes, which would easily be a record in terms of tonnage. The last two years have seen regional cherry growers produce record or near record crops as well. Yet, despite the increase in volume, Northwest cherries still fetch high prices for growers, especially in the Asian markets. But will there come a threshold point when there are simply too many cherries grown and not enough buyers to take them? David Severn of Northwest Cherries says in the foreseeable future, the answer is no. In fact the main concern is not how many cherries are available, but the times they are available for purchase by interested markets both domestically and internationally. SEVERN: For now, what we see is the demands still exceeds our abilities to supply it and probably the main thing that we have going for us that we have to overcome year in and year out is being able to market efficiently meaning that we need to have good crop progression. Last year, we had a bit of a problem because we had a rain blip in the middle which caused us supply issues. So the more smooth of a season you can have, the market's still able to take a large size crop. When you get some blips in the middle of the season, those cause more problems than the volume of the crop. But overall, the 2005 Northwest cherry crop, regardless of size, is expected to again be profitable to our region's cherry growers.
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