Climate takes its toll on the “cherry capital of the world” | Great Lakes Now

By Izzy Ross, Interlochen Public Radio

This coverage is made possible through a partnership with IPR and Grist, a nonprofit independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future.

Walking between rows of dormant cherry and apple trees in mid-November, Raul Gomez, operations manager at Wunsch Farms on the Old Mission Peninsula, pointed out sweet cherry varieties like black pearls.

I was there to hear about how the past year’s volatile weather affected crops in the region.

Gomez grew up in the area, and has been working in agriculture in some form or other since he was a teenager. Like most anyone in the industry, he said they’ve always been beholden to the weather.

Even so, this year was challenging for Michigan’s cherry growers. From heat to rain, weather hammered orchards. A record-warm winter was followed by a wet spring marked by rain, which led to fruit bursting and rotting on the trees. That brought pests and disease, like brown rot, which diminished the quality of several varieties and the size of the harvest. That rain also washed off pesticides, which meant growers had to spend more money trying to keep pests off the fruit.

As the summer wore on, “the water just shut off completely,” said Nikki Rothwell, a specialist with Michigan State University Extension, and the coordinator of the Northwest Michigan Horticulture Research Center.

“I don’t know if we could get any more challenging,” she said. “I mean, it just seemed like we had it all.”

The sweet crop was especially damaged. The governor’s office estimated that up to 75% of the crop was gone. The tart cherry crop fared better, and was up substantially over last year, but the quality declined.

This fall, the U.S. Department of Agriculture approved Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s request for emergency assistance to cover crop losses through a federal disaster declaration. Such aid can be helpful for some in the short term, said Gomez, but “none of us really want to get to the point where it’s considered a disaster, and now we are.”

Extreme weather is adding to other factors weighing on farmers, like the rising costs of labor and production, and increased competition from other countries.

President-elect Donald Trump made those struggles central to his campaign. When Vice President-elect J.D. Vance held a rally in Traverse City in September, he denounced the high price of cherries and other foods.

He also invited cherry farmer Ben LaCross to speak about the industry’s financial struggles and promote Trump’s vision for regulations and trade; LaCross said the administration “will support our farmers through trade deals that help farmers like me compete on a level playing field in the global market” and “cut down on the bureaucratic red tape that stifles the American farmer.”

Yet in its messaging around the struggles farmers are facing, the incoming administration hasn’t focused on the climate change warping the industry. Instead, Trump has promised to ramp up fossil fuel production and roll back regulations on emissions, and has taken aim at legislation like the Inflation Reduction Act, which provides hundreds of billions of dollars for things including clean energy tax credits.

Small and historically overlooked farmers often bear the brunt of climate change and cutbacks on programs meant to help the industry.

My Grist colleague Ayurella Horn-Muller spoke to experts concerned about the future of farmer safety nets, which are being strained as climate change-fueled weather is pushing up demand for government assistance. For instance, Project 2025, a sweeping conservative policy blueprint, calls for curbing crop insurance subsidies, eliminating land conservation incentives, and eliminating commodity payments, among other programs.

After much back and forth between Congress and Trump this week, with Elon Musk weighing in as well, the Senate was able to pass a bill continuing disaster aid and averting a government shutdown early Saturday.

Meanwhile, in northern Michigan, many farmers are shifting their approach to cherry growing, such as transitioning to high density planting to cut down on the costs of harvesting and improve quality or working with new kinds of fruit altogether.

And some, like Leisa Eckerle Hankins, are trying to bring people in the industry together to figure out how to move forward. Last spring, she started the Cherry Grower Alliance to create a space for growers to gather, discuss their concerns, and work on solutions.

“We’re trying to be sustainable for our next generation, and so we don’t want everything that’s out there to be doom and gloom,” she told me one November morning as she was getting ready to open her Traverse City store, Benjamin Twiggs, which sells cherry products.

Eckerle Hankins’ family-run operation in Leelanau County lost 97% of its sweet cherry crop to a fungal brown rot brought on by rains last season, and they tapped crop insurance to offset some of those devastating damages.

On top of challenges like that, she said, growers are dealing with unreliable returns, labor shortages and costs, and competition.

“Every industry, everybody has struggles at times, and this is our struggle time,” Eckerle Hankins said. “And so we’re coming together to look at how we can change things.”

Read more about this at Grist.

Editor’s note: Raul Gomez, who was interviewed for this story, is a member of IPR’s Community Advisory Council. The council has no editorial control over stories.

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Featured image: Raul Gomez, operations manager at Wunsch Farms, walks through an orchard on the Old Mission Peninsula in November 2024. (Photo: Izzy Ross/IPR News)