While Oregon’s sweet cherry crop seems superb, Washington faces a smaller harvest due to weather damage.

Ashley Thompson of Oregon State University Extension Service said Oregon orchards in Hood River and Wasco counties looked great, especially early on.

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“Things were big and beautiful, cherries were very large,” she said.

Intense heat in early July did compromise the quality of some varieties, but later harvested cherries also appeared strong.

“I’ve heard really positive things about prices from growers, but we won’t really know what people made, what the take home was, until the fall,” Thompson said.

“I think people are making money and I hope that’s the case because we’ve had several rough years,” she added.

Production down

West Coast sweet cherry production is predicted to hit 333,000 tons, down 6% from 2023, according to a recent USDA Economic Research Service report.

A larger forecast for Oregon’s harvest (up 11%) won’t be enough to offset declines in Washington (down 11%) and California (down 2%).

Washington, which accounts for 52% of the crop in the estimate, is expected to decline by 23,000 tons due to winter damage.

Weather hampers Washington

A hard freeze in January damaged some Washington cherry orchards.

The unusually cold weather may result in lower end-of-season volumes from more heavily impacted counties in the north of the state.

The 2023 season received a disaster designation in Washington and some areas of Oregon due to a compressed harvest season that resulted in an increase of unharvested cherries.

The shortened season, along with overlap from a late California crop, put downward pressure on grower prices for the highly perishable fruit.

As a result, Washington’s average sweet cherry grower price per ton for 2023 was 50% lower than in 2022. That was the state’s largest year-over-year price decline since 2009.

Exports increase

Boosted by increased production in the 2023 season, the U.S. exported 177.5 million pounds of fresh sweet cherries, the largest volume since 2019.

Organic sweet cherry exports reached a record 11.5 million pounds, about 6% of the total exports.

July shipments

Northwest Cherry Growers shipments were at 8.67 million 20-pound equivalent boxes as of July 24.

The total likely will lag the 2023 shipments of 11.6 million boxes, but it should be close to the five-year average of 10.5 million boxes for the organization.

Northwest Cherry Growers represents about 2,500 farmers from Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana and Utah.