Rubin: Troubles are abloom for the cherry industry, but it's not necessarily the pits

With the National Cherry Festival in full bloom, this is no time for the executive director of the celebration and the reigning cherry queen to be pessimistic about the Michigan cherry industry.

Concerned, yes. Even from her generation, said director Kat Paye, 42, she doesn't know anyone who decided to buy 120 acres of land, plant cherry trees, wait five years for them to produce, and then hope for a high enough price per pound to not lose money.

But pessimistic? When 500,000 or so people are expected to ramble through Traverse City before the festival ends Saturday, the concerts are so lively that Jefferson Starship is just Bret Michaels' opening act , and someone will sell you an entire slice of cherry pie mixed with ice cream and put through a flurry machine?

There's foreign competition to deal with, low yields, climate change, and all the standard headaches that come with having Mother Nature as a business partner. It's a tough way to make a living.

Still, said Cherry Queen Carmen Beemer, "We will remain enthusiastic and excited ambassadors for the cherry industry and cherry crop and our entire state, all the way until the last remaining cherry tree."

Beemer, 22, is not your everyday agricultural queen, assuming there is such a thing. She graduated from Michigan State two months ago with a degree in horticultural science and a minor in crop and soil science.

Also, that notion of a last remaining cherry tree is both hypothetical and exaggerated. Depending on who's doing the counting and how good the year was, Michigan produces 65% to 74% of America's tart cherries, plus a smattering of sweets — a tidy portion of the state's $104.7 billion agriculture industry .

It's important, clearly, to have cherry production continue to blossom, and the harvest should kick into high gear any day. So this seemed like the right moment to check in, not that Paye puts limits on her rooting.

"We're fired up about cherries year-round," she said. Cherry mustard, cherry salsa, cherry barbecue sauce, dried cherries — "We can go on for days."

Troubles take root

The Free Press' John Carlisle wrote a wrenching story last August about a cherry grower in Grand Traverse County who gave up. Too many hours on a tractor, too many unfairly subsidized imports, too many people wanting too many big new houses on suddenly coveted farmland.

"There are layers of challenges," Paye conceded, most leading back to money and uncertainty. Tops on the list — and be advised that while sweet cherries are picked, tarts are shaken from their trees — is that "you don't know what price you're getting for your cherries until after you shake and take them to the processor."

Then there's the increasingly erratic climate, which brings not only crop damage, but instability in growing seasons. If cherries in one area blossom later than usual, they're in competition with cherries that are ready on schedule elsewhere.

On or off schedule, everyone is competing with cherry products from places like Turkey, where government subsidies keep prices artificially low enough that in 2019, the Department of Commerce instituted a whopping tariff on dried cherries and cherry juice.

The U.S. International Trade Commission reversed most of that decision, and while there's still an assessment on juice, Beemer said, importers quickly figured out they could route it through other countries and duck the penalty.

On the plus side of the ledger, Beemer said, "I'm hearing that prices will be better than last year."

On the harsh reality side, "it still might not be profitable."

It's a good thing, she said, that so many farmers consider what they do a lifestyle, or even a calling: "They're not going down without a fight."

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New ways to compete

Beemer did not grow up on a farm. But south of Grand Rapids in Middleville, population 4,396, everyone was agriculture-adjacent.

"Whether I was scooping ice cream or scooping poop," she said, "I did it all."

In her first post-college job, she's working for a small agricultural startup, servicing the west side of Michigan. On a cherry-related promotional trip to Chicago, Paye said, Beemer mostly wanted to look at shrubbery.

As a duo, they said the keys to weathering the current storms ― or future droughts, because whatever the worst might be, farmers always have to deal with it ― are patience and diversification.

"A lot of them have learned you can't just grow cherries," Paye said.

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Some have added additional crops like pears, peaches or apples, even if they've had to remove some cherry trees to do it. Others have invested in processing machinery so they can operate at both ends of the food chain.

"While one industry might be getting the shorter end of the stick," said Beemer, who will crown her successor Friday, "the other might be keeping them above water."

Government grants are available, she pointed out, and hope is free. Crop yields and prices are habitually cyclical, so better days should be coming.

Meantime, outstate Michigan's largest summer festival is sprouting. One of those cherry pie flurries won't make up for a bad year, but it'll make for a good day.

Reach Neal Rubin at NARubin@freepress.com.

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This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Rubin: Troubles are abloom for the cherry industry, but it's not necessarily the pits