The Washington state’s cherry industry didn’t miss a beat when the Covid-19 pandemic arrived a year ago. Washington growers harvested nearly 20 million boxes, even as new safety protocols rolled across the Pacific Northwest in the early days of the virus outbreak. Cherries are an early crop, and the harvest coincided with the new rules.
The 2021 cherry crop is shaping up to be larger than last year’s, with the usual caveats: A single weekend of wind or rain could cause widespread devastation. The 2021 crop is likely to be around 23.8 million, 20-pound boxes.
Final tallies for 2020 will be released in the fall, but the 2019 crop yielded sales valued at $393 million for the state.
But 2020 sales were strong, Jon DeVaney, president of the Washington State Tree Fruit Association. said. Consumers shopped heavily at grocery stores for in-home dining, taking advantage of fresh fruit with big health benefits.
“People who might have normally been inclined to have food cooked for them found that easy-to-consume fruit did very well,” he told tricitiesbusinessnews.com. “People became more health conscious and thought, ‘Maybe I should eat fresh fruit to support my health.’ ”
