San Joaquin County, the state’s top producer of cherries, has filed a disaster declaration with the state for the second consecutive year because of damage to the crop.
This year’s cherry crop was so badly hit — first by heat, then by late-season rains — that county Agricultural Commissioner Kamal Bagri said Thursday that a disaster declaration letter was sent this week to the California Office of Emergency Services.
It came after a survey found damage to 63.5% of the county’s crop. That’s a total loss of $174.4 million compared to what would normally be harvested.
The hope is that the declaration will eventually lead to relief from the federal government to beleaguered growers. There are about 300 growers in San Joaquin County.
This is the second year in the row that the county has sought the declaration. Last year, the cherry crop came in at only about 43% of what would be considered normal.
More than half of California’s cherry crop in 2024 was grown in San Joaquin County, the most recent crop report produced by Bagri’s office shows. Cherries were the sixth most valuable agricultural product in the county that year, with an estimated worth of $240 million.
But a wave of ill-timed climate events hit this year, beginning with a heat wave in the early spring. The warm weather sped up the cherry blossom bloom and led to an earlier harvest, Chris Zanobini, executive director of the California Cherry Board, told The Packer, a trade publication.
A month later, storms followed, including one particularly damaging one. Rain that falls as harvest approaches can be especially ruinous for the crop. It can cause the fruit to absorb water and rupture, splitting open in ways that allow mold to grow.
“Every year we pray for no rain during this time of the year,” Bagri said last week, in warning that Mother Nature may have damaged the cherries so much that the fruit would not meet expectations for size or quality.
Following last year’s disaster declaration, U.S. Rep. Josh Harder, D-Tracy, announced he was seeking to “unlock the full range of resources our growers need not just to survive this season, but to come back stronger.”
The U.S. Department of Agriculture announced it would buy up to $3 million of dried sweet cherries to help support local cherry farmers and processors.