“As a company, we have significantly grown our cherry program this year, probably threefold over our acreage last year,” said Don Goforth, marketing manager for Family Tree Farms Marketing LLC in Reedley, CA, in an interview with The Produce News April 1. “With the success of our cherry program in past years, we have really needed” to grow the program to meet customer demands.

Family Tree Farms has what Goforth considers to be “the best customer base in the world. We really have a great bunch of customers that just really support the company,” and the cherry program “is going very well” with them.

“A robust cherry program is absolutely a natural fit” for the company, he said.

Don Goforth, marketing manager for Family Tree Farms.Family Tree Farms is now in its sixth year in the cherry business. Cherries are “one of the few crops” for which the company partners with outside growers, Goforth said. For almost everything else, the orchards are all owned and farmed by owner Dave Jackson and the Jackson family.

With the need to expand its cherry program, this year Family Tree Farms “actively sought … and successfully secured” quality growers who “match up well” with the needs of the company’s customers, Goforth said. “It has taken a lot of work, but we have the right cherry growers that are going to complement our program.”

The “Family Tree” brand “stands for something,” he said. “Our customer base demands the highest quality, and our cherry program had to be consistent with the brand.”

With its increased acreage, Family Tree Farms is definitely a player in the cherry deal, Goforth said. “We have a lot of cherries, and they are very high quality. It fits with the ‘Family Tree’ brand.”

The acreage added to the program has been “the right varieties,” he added. They include Royal Lynn, Coral Champagne, and “I am happy to report the addition of a Bing cherry program this year as well.”

The Bings are being grown north of Madera but “not all the way into the Stockton area,” he said.

Also new this year is a Rainier cherry program. “It is not huge, but it is much bigger than we have ever had” and big enough to complement the program, he said.

All of the cherries are packed at KY Packing in Reedley on a new packingline located in the former Ballantine packingshed that was renovated in 2012 and transformed into a state-of-the-art cherry facility. It is an “absolutely beautiful” facility, Goforth said. “I think it is the nicest cherry shed in the valley.” Tony Yasuda, who heads Family Tree’s cherry program and is also a large cherry grower, is a partner in KY.

This year, Family Tree Farms will be packing cherries in a new stand-up bag, Goforth said. “That does a lot of things. I think it displays the cherries much better to the consumer. It also keeps the cherries off the floor in the grocery store. That is probably what is driving the stand-up bag more than anything else.”

In cherries as in other categories, at Family Tree Farms “we go to market with partners,” he said. “We try to set up programs as best we can,” and for cherries “those programs are being set up right now. We are not real big on day-to-day selling.”

However, the company sells cherries to export markets as well as domestic customers, and in the international trade there is more of a “day-by-day dynamic,” Goforth said. “Export is kind of a wild card in the deck. You just never know.” As of the first of April, the international markets were “starting to wake up a little bit” and show interest in the new California cherry season. “We are starting to get those phone calls from Asia and others,” inquiring about Family Tree’s cherries, he said.