When fourth-generation farmer John Pulcipher took on the family’s cherry farm business full-time 16 years ago, he says the profits were fairly good for the crop, particularly for growers like him in the Traverse City area.
But increasing challenges over the past several years forced Pulcipher, 67, to recently clear out all 110 acres of his cherry trees in Acme Township, northeast of Traverse City. It’s a decision he says he contemplated for the past two years as he faced weather concerns and competition from imports that have driven down — and in some cases eliminated — profits for tart cherry farmers.
“There’s a confluence of things that have happened in the area and on the farm that just made me say it’s time for me to move on,” he said.
Pulchipher is among farmers in Michigan removing or reducing the number of tart cherry trees on their farms. Michigan has long been the top U.S. producer of tart cherries, accounting for 75% of the national total, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. According to the state, Michigan produced 201 million pounds of tart cherries in 2018 valued at $280.1 million.
The tart cherry crop in the state has a direct economic impact of $37.7 million and an indirect economic impact of $58.5 million, according to Michigan State University’s Interim Update on the Economic Impact of Michigan’s Agri-Food System released in May.
The report noted that the industry “continues to face difficulty due to changing consumer tastes and foreign competition. Access to labor is also an issue facing some fruit growers.”
The acreage of fruit-bearing tart cherry trees in Michigan has been declining since 2015, from 28,400 acres to 23,000 acres in 2022, according to the USDA. Experts cite numerous reasons, including cheap imports from Turkey and developers purchasing orchards for other uses.
After a low tart cherry crop harvest in 2012 blamed on bad weather, U.S. processors turned to imports to fill the gap, said Julie Gordon, president at the Cherry Marketing Institute in DeWitt.
“In 2013, most of our processors went back to domestic product, but then some of them did not,” she said. “Some of them were able to get the imported product cheaper than what they could buy domestic product for, so they continued with the imported product. Over the years, it’s just increased.”
The issue with imports from Turkey has been a concern for the past several years, said Nikki Rothwell, extension fruit specialist for Michigan State University: “A lot of Turkish farmers are subsidized so they can grow their fruit at far reduced rates and costs than it would cost our growers.
“So it’s put a lot of economic pressure on our growers. There are some growers that are maybe getting up in age, or they just feel like it’s stressful to them, and so they’ve been pulling cherries out.”
When they decide to stop growing cherries, farmers remove the trees from their orchards so they don’t become a haven for insects and diseases that would impact other farmers, Rothwell said.
In addition to import concerns, farmers also must contend with frost and freezes, invasive species and other pests, as well as suburban sprawl, said Theresa Sisung, Michigan Farm Bureau industry relations specialist.
There’s also an issue with sprawl, particularly with population growth in the Traverse City area. That makes it more economically feasible to develop the land, rather than to continue to farm.
“Someone who maybe is getting closer to retirement or is wanting to scale back their operation, they can make a lot more money selling that land for housing development than they can using it to raise tart cherries, or really any agricultural crops, unfortunately,” Sisung said.
