The plump red cherries growing in little clumps on the tree are eye-level in this expansive orchard of 160 acres.
Ryan Rowley is apologizing for the late July heat during a visit to the Payson orchard, but if he knew what at least one visitor was thinking — of reaching out and grabbing some of that fruit as quickly as possible — the heat would not likely be the first of his concerns.
Julie Gordon, president of the Cherry Marketing Institute, said this tempting tree and its cherries are what growers want to see.
“See how they are all bunched up in clumps? That is what they want,” she said. She pointed to a different tree where many of the cherries hung one by one, or perhaps in pairs.
“That is what you see in Michigan.”
Cherries are pictured at Chad Rowley’s farm in Payson on Thursday, July 27, 2023.
Kristin Murphy, Deseret News
Utah’s sweet success
Michigan, in fact, is No. 1 in the United States for its tart cherry production, but Utah is second, hosting around 17 commercial producers in this area with many of those growers involved in a co-op that allows them to consolidate costs on processing, trade stories about the problem of the day — such as insects — and pool efforts to find workers.
While it has been better this season, Marc Rowley said it’s been especially tough over the last couple of years to find enough help.
They recruit through the federal government’s H-2A Temporary Agricultural Workers program, which in Utah requires a minimum wage of $16.34 an hour, plus the provision of housing. Orchard farmers also rely on their family, with farmer Robert McMullin proudly noting his Utah County tart cherry operation is bringing along a fifth generation of family members.
Some of Utah’s orchards and McMullin Orchards Inc. — the processing plant — were showcased in a Thursday tour that is part of a nationwide “Buy U.S.-grown tart cherries” marketing campaign funded by a Utah Department of Agriculture and Food Specialty Crop Block Grant.
Aleta Lundell and Katherine Roberts fill buckets with cherries at the McMullin Orchards processing plant in Payson on Thursday, July 27, 2023.
Kristin Murphy, Deseret News
The battle over imports
The institute said the U.S. tart cherry industry has been overwhelmed by cheap foreign imports that have caused record low prices, putting many American multigenerational farming operations out of business. It added that the excessively cheap imported cherries are generally subsidized by their governments to offer a product that can be brought into the country at low prices and sold below the cost of production for Utah farmers.
“Imports are crushing a lot of U.S. agriculture,” Gordon said, impacting not only tart cherry growers but asparagus and blueberry farmers, to name a few.
Five dried cherry processors, including the Payson operation in Utah County, filed an “anti-dumping” lawsuit striking at the heart of this problem. The suit asserted Turkey was flooding the U.S. market with dried tart cherries and lowering domestic product prices. At the time the legal action was filed in 2019, Turkey accounted for more than 60% of the dried cherry imports coming into the U.S., and the imports had doubled each of the past three years.
It was a dire situation, according to the Utah Department of Agriculture and Food.
“They are selling below their cost of production and are putting no value on the cherry in order to grow their market share,” the state agency said in a statement. “Because of the sinking grower prices in the U.S., Utah producers have had to store at least two seasons of harvest.”
The U.S. producers did not prevail in their legal action.
In such a climate, it’s been tough on domestic agricultural producers. Costs keep going up, such as labor, but foreign imports are making it tough to stay in business.
Marc Rowley, who is on the board of the Cherry Marketing Institute, as well as the Utah Red Tart Cherry Board, grows about 400 acres of fruit, including cherries.
“We want to keep growing cherries, but only if it is profitable.”
The margins are slim, and development is creeping in all around them.
In 2021, researchers at Utah State University were awarded nearly $2 million to study more efficient ways of managing this major crop, with the goal of helping farmers tackle obstacles such as drought, pests, low yield and soil health.
According to USU, tart cherries are a valuable component of Utah’s agricultural industry, generating between $7 million and $21 million per year. But because cherries are a machine-harvested crop, they do not get the value per pound as other fruits do.
The four-year study, in collaboration with researchers at Michigan State, involves the use of sensor-loaded drones to create three-dimensional pictures of orchards that can be used to analyze orchard characteristics such as canopy density, soil health and disease and pest outbreaks. The study is examining at least eight different orchard blocks in Utah and will provide details on orchards of varying ages.
Orchard farmers on the tour said this year has been tough due to weather: wind, hail, rain and more wind.
Robert McMullin talks about cooling cherries in cold water so they can be pitted outside of the McMullin Orchards processing plant in Payson on Thursday, July 27, 2023.
Kristin Murphy, Deseret News
Old and intricate
Processing tart cherries is labor intensive, with extreme attention to detail, meticulous examination of the fruit and a methodical step-by-step process to ensure a quality product.
After harvesting, they need to be cooled to just the right temperature to ensure they are firm and are spread out in bins of water to make that happen. Each bin of cherries is rated before it advances to the next stage. Visitors on the tour were able to dip their hand into the cool 51-degree water, a refreshing break from the heat that also underscored the necessity of the cooling process.
There are also pitter machines that remove the pits in a technology first patented around 1902 that Robert McMullin said hasn’t really changed that much.
He and other producers are trying to find a stable market for dried cherry pits, which according to one commercial retailer, put out 9,523 BTUs, or British thermal units, per pound — more than wood pellets. A BTU is a measure of heat.
In a separate process, the cherries need to be de-stemmed and sorted for impurities with a machine at this stage.
Those that don’t make the cut are destined to be transformed into juice. Frozen cherries, McMullin stressed, need to be perfect.
Once inside the warehouse, they are again sorted for impurities by hand via a line of workers tossing the less than perfect cherries into a pail. Those that make it this far down the line end up in a different container, topped with sugar and sealed with a lid pounded shut with a hammer. The last step is either freezing, drying or canning the cherries to be sold.
Nationally, there are about 300 million pounds of tart cherries produced each year in the United States and 98% of those are the Montmorency variety, according to the institute.
Ryan Rowley wants to continue the tight-knit family tradition and said he hopes the public understands the importance of domestic agriculture.
“There’s no better environmentalist than the farmer,” he said. “No one cares more about the water, soil ... than farmers. Our 160 acres of open space improves the quality of life in this family, this area. As stewards of this land, we want to make good use of it.”
Robert McMullin talks about cooling cherries in cold water so they can be pitted outside of the McMullin Orchards processing plant in Payson on Thursday, July 27, 2023.
Kristin Murphy, Deseret News
"fruit" - Google News
July 29, 2023 at 04:25AM
https://ift.tt/ZfJdq0R
Tart cherry production: Little tasty fruit is grown big time in Utah - Deseret News
"fruit" - Google News
https://ift.tt/91MOnwf
https://ift.tt/aVwdvhi
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "Tart cherry production: Little tasty fruit is grown big time in Utah - Deseret News"
Post a Comment