It has been a challenging season for Canadian cherry growers. “I haven’t seen the final numbers, but we are estimating this year’s crop volume to be less than half of last year’s,” says Andre Bailey with Global Fruit. “There was some winter damage, spring frost and rain on the early crop. As a result, the cherry crop is way lighter this year.”
Back-end of season is better
However, there is a bit of good news towards the end of the season. “The back-end of the crop is pretty good and as a result, we hope growers will be able to cover the cost of production,” Bailey shared. Cherry prices have been good throughout the season and with the quality improving towards the end, Bailey said there will be decent availability for Labor Day. Harvest just finished, but cherries should be available all the way through Labor Day next Monday.
Unitec a season-saver
“If it wasn’t for our Unitec Vision 3.0, we wouldn’t have been able to hit the quality we are known for,” Bailey admitted. “Not only is the crop volume down, the defect-rates were astronomical as many cherries were damaged from weather. Thanks to the optical sorting technology we were able to push through. This was the first year we had Unitec Vision 3.0 in all our sheds and it was amazing. It truly was a season-saver.”
For more information:
Andre Bailey
Global Fruit
Tel: (+1) 250-428-2320
andre@globalfruit.org
www.globalfruit.org