Rain and cold weather delayed the California cherry crop and affected pollination, says Kyle Persky, sales manager for Rivermaid Trading, Lodi, Calif.
Still, the cherry harvest will begin in late April, and Persky said the 2023 edition is likely bigger than last year’s.
The bloom weather was not great for the trees, he said, although conditions before the bloom made growers optimistic about this year’s crop.
“But it really doesn’t look like the kind of set the way we’d hoped for,” he said.
The 2022 California cherry crop was below average after a large 2021 crop, Persky said. The 2023 crop may be slightly larger than last year, somewhere in the middle between about 5 million cartons on the low side and 10 million to 11 million cartons on the high side.
Cherry harvest season should start in late April for Rivermaid Trading. Heavier production is expected from mid-May through mid-June, he said.
With Washington cherry harvest also expected late, Persky predicted it should be fairly smooth transition between California and Northwest cherry seasons.
Rivermaid added fieldman Tony Yasuda and his grower group in 2022. Field man Luke Workman also joined Rivermaid Trading this year and is bringing some grower volume to the company.
The addition of Workman to the Rivermaid team will add front-end volume to the marketer, Persky said.
That, combined with last year’s addition of Yasuda, will even out the supply curve for the marketer throughout the season. Rivermaid has traditionally been pretty heavy toward the back end of the season, he said.
“The addition of these two groups over the last two years is going to help us to get up to peak production quicker and be able to be a player in the market a little bit sooner,” he said.
Cherries will be available to feature for Memorial Day but also in the weeks after, he said, when cherries will be more abundant.
