An early crop with legs portends an excellent California cherry season this year, but buyers might not want to get too comfortable with that scenario.

The California cherry industry has changed tremendously in the last 20 years, according to Jim Hanson of Grower Direct Marketing LLC, in Stockton, CA. “In 1995, California cherries were grown in a 30-mile radius around the Linden, Livingston, Stockton area,” he said speaking of some cities in the northern quadrant of the San Joaquin Valley. “Today they are grown in a 300-mile radius.”

Newer varieties have led to that geographic diversity and allowed for more stability in volume, according to Hanson. In years gone by, an untimely rain could literally wipe out the crop. Now with many micro-climates over a larger area, ranging from the southern San Joaquin Valley to the traditional northern valley acreage, it would be very rare for a rain to deliver a devastating blow to everyone.

This should lead to an optimistic view of the future, but on the day (March 31) that Hanson talked to The Produce News, the California Legislature passed a new minimum wage for the state that phases in a $15 per hour rate over the next six years, which had this longtime grower/shipper seeing red… as in red ink. After apologizing for getting political, Hanson said that could ruin the industry. “Cherries are a very labor-intensive crop. We have two problems. Labor is very expensive and we don’t have enough labor to harvest and pack the crop.”

He said the increase in minimum wage will be very hard to absorb. Already Hanson said packers have had to invest in expensive electronic sorting and packing machines to alleviate the labor situation. While Grower Direct has state-of-the-art equipment that does a fantastic job of color, quality and size sorting, Hanson does not enthusiastically tout that advance because he said, “you can’t survive without it. Buy the equipment or get out of the business.”

Nonetheless, the firm has updated all of its packing equipment and has a 72-line set up, which allows it to timely pack this crop which only last five to six weeks. He said the color sorters do a fabulous job, allowing the company to sell a very consistent pack and exactly meet customer specifications.

For the past decade, the firm also has had a deal in the Pacific Northwest that allows it to transition from California to that region with no gap in supplies. Grower Direct also sources from Chile as one of the larger importers of cherries from South America. While these different sources of supply cannot give it coverage 52 weeks a year, Hanson said Grower Direct can boast that it has cherries every week that they are available during the year. He noted that Chile does not consider the United States its number one market and tends to get a better return when shipping its cherries to Asia.

But Hanson said the seasonality of the fruit is a positive as it engenders excitement by both the retailer who has something new to promote and the consumer who has something new to eat. “Research shows,” he added. “that when cherries are available they outperform every other item in the produce department.”