Last year was nothing short of a disaster for the northern Michigan cherry industry.

This year might have been even worse.

“In 2024, in this region, we had 100 million pounds [of combined tart cherries]. We were thinking, going into the 2025 season, we would probably have about 25 million pounds. So, even the projection was way, way down,” says Leisa Eckerle-Hankins, the fifth-generation heir to a family cherry farm in Leelanau County.

According to Phil Hallstedt, who owns the Northport U-pick cherry farm Hallstedt Homestead Cherries, things took a turn for the worse early on this season and never got back on track. While Hallstedt says local cherry farmers were optimistic for 2025 after a lengthy winter and a cool spring staved off some of the pest and disease pressure that plagued last year’s crop, the spring still left plenty of room for things to go wrong – and they did.

“As has been widely reported, the winds and the cold temperatures on April 30, plus some other dates right during pollination, created a very poor pollination situation,” Hallstedt explains.

Northern Michigan saw temps dip down to 30 degrees Fahrenheit on April 30, with windy, frosty conditions that were especially hostile to blossoming cherry trees.

“After that, [industry leaders] were estimating that the crop would be around two-thirds of what it was last year,” Hallstedt continues. “But I checked in with a few other growers, and what I'm hearing is it might actually be down to less than half, and maybe all the way down to 30 percent of the tarts. It’s pretty devastating.”

Local cherry farmers are no strangers to devastation, especially lately. Last year, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) issued a disaster declaration for 11 counties in Michigan, due to the state’s dismal sweet cherry harvest. According to the Michigan Department of Agriculture and Rural Development (MDARD), Michigan’s sweet cherry farmers “lost upwards to 75 percent of their crops” in 2024.

“The sweet crops were almost entirely wiped out last year,” Hallstedt says. “Our farm was one of the exceptions. We actually had a good crop, because we were a little bit further north.”

No such luck this year. Hallstedt estimates the sweet cherry crop at Hallstedt Homestead Cherries “was as down about 70 percent” compared to 2024. And the April cold spell was just one of the problems.

“Unless you really stayed on top of spraying,” Hallstedt says, it was also a “pretty devastating” year in terms of disease and pest issues like fungus, European brown rot, and spotted wing drosophila. A few heavy rain events throughout the spring and summer damaged many of the healthy fruit that remained. Sweltering conditions throughout July delivered the knockout punch.

“The heat really got hot, and that doesn't help the fruit quality of what's remaining, nor does it do us any favors from a U-pick standpoint,” Hallstedt says. “Those really hot weeks, it was just brutal in terms of crowds. But then again, we didn't have a lot of fruit for people to pick, so it kind of balanced out.”

The silver lining for sweet cherries? The fruit that that did survive all the way to harvest was significantly better than 2024’s bounty, even if the size of the crop was still lacking.

“This year, there were some good sweets,” Eckerle-Hankins says. “We didn’t reject as much of the sweet crop at our station as we have in the past. It definitely wasn’t the greatest season, but the quality of the fruit, at least, was much better than last year.”

Silver linings are harder to find for the tart crop. Eckerle-Hankins estimates her family farm is going to be down 60 percent, “and I know growers who are anywhere from 60-80 percent down on their tarts,” she tells The Ticker. Some harder-hit farms, she says, even opted not to harvest their tarts at all, because the cost and effort of doing so outweighed any benefit of taking the paltry crop to market.

The woes of northern Michigan cherry growers are so pronounced that they are making national headlines this week. This past Saturday, Reuters published an article titled “In Michigan’s cherry country, the federal safety net is fraying,” which looked at the combined impact of “weather woes and Trump-era cutbacks” on the local industry.

The good thing about two dreadful cherry seasons in a row? With supply down and demand still high, commodity prices for cherries are likely to go through the roof.

“A couple processors have said ‘We’re going to pay 75 cents per pound,’” Eckerle-Hankins says. “Others are saying ‘45 cents down, and then we'll see [about additional payment] once we sell.’ So, we’re at least going to get a little bit more money than we have the past few years.” For reference, Eckerle-Hankins says the industry standard price for tart cherries was 20-25 cents per pound last year, and 13-18 cents per pound the year before.

But the increase can only do so much.

“Overall, it's still going to be another tough year for those farmers that have been struggling already,” Eckerle-Hankins says. “Because even with a higher price, you’re going to get a lower monetary amount, because you have fewer cherries. When you got 20 cents per pound but you had a better crop, that might still be more money than 45 cents per pound when you have a really thin crop. Every cherry is counting this year.”

Other parts of the state will benefit more from the price increase. Eckerle-Hankins leads the Michigan Cherry Grower Alliance, a cadre of Michigan cherry growers working together for a brighter industry future. “West central and southern Michigan actually did okay; they’re shaking out ahead of their projections,” she says. Farmers in those areas, in other words, will enjoy the perks of higher pricing without the drawbacks of a thinner crop.

In northern Michigan, though, Eckerle-Hankins predicts a reckoning.

“The reality is, yes, there are probably going to be some smaller farmers who say, ‘We can't continue to do this.’ You'll see more farms closing and more land going up for sale, which is obviously not what we want to see.”