Area cherry growers and agriculture officials are still awaiting word on Michigan’s federal disaster relief request over losses in this year’s sweet cherry crop.
The state Department of Agriculture and Rural Development is still waiting on a response to Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s Aug. 2 letter to U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack seeking a disaster designation for nine Michigan counties related to weather, disease and pest damage to this year’s sweet cherry crop. The conditions, described as “unprecedented” by some growers, resulted in a crop loss of up to 75 percent for some Michigan orchards, officials said.
Counties included in the disaster request included
Counties affected include Antrim, Benzie, Berrien, Grand Traverse, Leelanau, Manistee, Mason, Oceana and Van Buren.
State Agriculture Department spokesman Nate Engle said last week there’s been no formal answer yet to Whitmer’s request, but that officials expect an update in the near future. Local sweet cherry growers faced a myriad of weather-related challenges which damaged this year’s crop. The mild winter of 2023-24 didn’t sufficiently kill off disease and pest hazards to local orchards, and a stretch of warm, wet and humid early summer weather also bolstered disease and insect damage to the cherries. Those included brown rot, cherry leaf spot and spotted wing drosophila (SWD), an invasive pest first detected in Michigan in 2010 that damages mid- to late-summer fruit crops.
Local orchard operators also reported that periodic and sometimes heavy rainfall in the early stages of the growing season limited the effectiveness of fungicides and insecticides used to keep fruit free from disease and pest damage.
So far the state’s disaster request is limited to the sweet cherry crop. While growers of tart cherries — which are harvested after sweets — also reported similar quality and damage problems, the overall harvest yield was not dramatically reduced, state officials said, and markets for some of that fruit were still available for products like cherry juice, juice concentrate and other processing uses.
Nikki Rothwell, coordinator of the Northwest Michigan Horticultural Research Station, said tart growers and processors are still evaluating the results of the tart cherry harvest before deciding whether to seek federal relief for the tart crop as well.
A federal disaster designation from the USDA would open several grower assistance programs to local farmers, including low-interest loans, and other ad hoc programs available for disaster relief created through the U.S. Congress.
“We’re still looking at the losses,” Rothwell said last week. “Some of that information is being held pretty close to the vest.”
