May 15th 2007 Issue

In My View — Will 20 million boxes be enough?

The domestic cherry market, still in its infancy, has a total market penetration of only 27 percent.

A 20-million-box crop? Is that where Pacific Northwest cherry production is headed? Since 1999, shipments of fresh, sweet cherries have increased by nearly one million boxes each year to arrive at the 14.7 million cases shipped in 2006. With new planting continuing apace and more than 8,000 acres of young trees slated to reach fruit-bearing maturity within one to three years, it does not take much to imagine a 20-million-box crop in the near future. The rapid growth in tonnage brings with it much talk of market saturation and the related concerns of soft prices and unsold inventories. How much […]

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