Cherry farmers in South Australia have had the worst harvest in 50 years, losing up to 70% of their crops to wild pre-Christmas storms and forcing up prices.
Storms and heavy rain also lashed New South Wales cherries, forcing growers to dump hundreds of tonnes of fruit.
And the mango season has suffered from the opposite problem – the warm dry winter.
The CEO of Fruit Producers SA, Grant Piggott, said three storms rolled over cherry production areas, with the most recent one striking when cherries were ripe.
“We lost 60-70% across the industry, so it’s really hit quite hard,” he said.
“Cherries don’t like being wet.
“The Adelaide Hills had double the December average [rainfall] in those five days. People who’ve been in the industry for a while, they think it’s the worst for 50 years.”
Prices in the days before Christmas have been up to $50 a kilo, but Piggott said there were cheaper cherries to be found and the news has “cheered up” a bit since the storms, thanks to new sorting methods.
“They’ve invested in a lot of grading equipment to sort the cherries out … it throws out the ones that are no good through a camera process then makes sure the [good ones] go in a box, he said.
“So that’s been positive relative to five years ago, more cherries are getting to market, more are being salvaged.”
One NSW supplier, Fiona Hall, said they had to “walk away” from a crop because of the amount of damage.
“What the rain does at the wrong time is fill the cherries with water, and … split the skin. The skin just pops,” she said.
On the bright side, the Tasmanian harvest has reportedly gone well with bumper crops and fruit that is a higher quality than last year.
Fruit Growers of Tasmania said earlier this month that warm, long and sunny days meant the harvest ripened a week earlier than last year, and stayed on the tree longer, making them “bigger, darker and sweeter”.
