British Columbia’s cherry season ended early this year. In a normal year, harvest goes until early September, but this season was very concise with a slightly earlier start, but also a much earlier finish. “We began the Canadian harvest in mid-June, approximately five days ahead of a normal season,” says Ricky Chong with World Fresh Exports. “Abnormally hot weather brought on maturity early.” It was a short season that finished on August 17 for World Fresh Exports.
Overlap with Washington
While an early maturity is a desire for some crops, it certainly isn’t for Canadian cherries. Canada’s harvest follows the Washington cherry harvest, North America’s largest cherry growing state. This year, Washington’s harvest started ten days late and their harvest wasn’t nearly done when Canada entered the market. “Normally, we see an overlap of ten days, putting a downward pressure on prices,” commented Chong. “This season, the overlap lasted almost four weeks. That was close to half of the Canadian season.”
On top of the overlap, volumes were abundant in both states. Upfront, the Canadian cherry crop was expected to be moderate. “Due to a cold snap in spring, we were anticipating a lighter crop and thinned accordingly.” However, the “June Drop” was much smaller than everyone thought. It was less than 10 percent and as a result, we had a larger than expected crop on our hands,” said Chong.
Slower overseas demand
The traditional high demand from overseas markets for Canadian cherries was significantly impacted due to the overlap with Washington. “Since Washington was still shipping heavily until the end of July, it took until August for demand from Asia and the Middle East to pick up,” Chong shared. “The last ten days of our season, we did see some US demand. It wasn’t until the final stretch of the BC season for US demand to get stronger.”
More volume than anticipated, an extended overlap, and smaller fruit caused cherry prices to be historically low. What did that mean for cherry prices at retail? “Although we saw historically low prices at farm gate, most retailers didn’t pass on the savings to the consumers,” finished Chong.
Wildfires
In retrospect, Mother Nature may have been kind ending the Canadian cherry season early. The smoke from the wildfires (still burning) throughout the regions would have prevented crews from picking the remaining crop.
For more information:
Ricky Chong
World Fresh Exports, Inc.
Tel: +1 403-616-1977
[email protected]
www.world-fresh.com