As Northern Michigan farmers struggle to sustain the region’s cherry industry and the North questions its identity as the Cherry Capital of the World, we listen to the voices of growers to understand the challenges they’re facing and how some haven’t given up hope just yet.
This article first appeared in Traverse Northern Michigan. Find this story and more when you explore our magazine library. Want Traverse delivered to your door or inbox monthly? View our print subscription and digital subscription options.
Cherries are the calling card of Northern Michigan. They represent our home, just as citrus speaks for Florida, or as lobsters lobby for Maine. Here in the North, orchards define our landscape, U-Picking is a cherished tradition and a slice of pie means “I love you.”
There’s a reason we proudly call the Grand Traverse region the Cherry Capital of the World. Michigan farmers grow about 65 percent of tart cherries in the United States, and more than half of the mitten state’s crop comes from Grand Traverse, Leelanau and Antrim counties, with a few cherry farms in Benzie and Kalkaska, too.
Cherry production in this region is said to have begun in 1852 when, according to rumor, Presbyterian missionary Peter Dougherty planted numerous cherry trees on Old Mission Peninsula. The trees flourished, and other residents began planting their own orchards. In 1925, the community held a Blessing of the Blossoms Festival and crowned its first cherry queen, Gertrude Brown. A few years later, the Michigan state legislature passed a resolution making the Cherry Festival a national celebration. It’s been held almost every year since, canceling only for the Great Depression, World War II and the Covid-19 pandemic.
For many Northern Michiganders, our identity is tied to cherries—and not just to market the region or bring tourists Up North. Bob Sutherland, CEO of Cherry Republic, says it well: “Everyone who lives up here has a bit of a cherry farmer’s dirt under their fingernails.”
But cherry farmers these days face a perfect storm of challenges, from environmental to political. Erratic swings in temperature caused by climate change threaten cherry buds in the spring; cheap foreign imports have undercut prices that U.S. farmers can expect to earn; workers needed to harvest crops have grown scarce due to unaffordable housing prices and restrictive national immigration policies; and the local real estate frenzy has disincentivized growers from staying on their land when they can sell their orchards for millions. Between 2015 and 2022, the acreage of fruit-bearing tart cherry trees in Michigan declined from 28,400 to 23,000 acres, according to a USDA study—that’s nearly 20 percent of all cherry orchards—land that’s never coming back to farming.
Some farmers are even asking whether the cherry industry will survive here at all in the long term—and many are searching for solutions. As July brings the busy harvest and roadside stands and farmers market booths beckon, we turn to growers across the North to listen to their struggles and worries, their hopes and ideas as they face what may be the biggest hurdles of their lifetime.
Photo by Tim Hussey
The west coast of Michigan offers an ideal setting for our fruit belt, making this fertile region the second most agriculturally diverse in the nation after California’s central valley. Lake Michigan is our saving grace, explains Nikki Rothwell, a Michigan State University extension specialist at the Leelanau County–based Northwest Michigan Horticulture Research Center. The lake moderates temperatures along the coastline, and the land offers rich soil for growing sweet and tart cherries.
Leelanau farmer Don Gregory (pictured below) remembers when he first arrived to the region in the early 1970s, people would bet on which day West Grand Traverse Bay would freeze over. The longer the bay stayed frozen, he explains, the better the chance of having a good crop. Now, he says, farmers bet on how many years will pass before the bay freezes over at all.
In the early days, growers could count on a hearty annual crop. Only once in a lifetime would a freakish early spring warmup and subsequent frost kill the cherry buds. That happened in 1945, as soldiers were returning home from Europe and the Pacific following the end of war. “Once in a lifetime,” farmers told their children.
When cherries were wiped out due to a premature warmup and frost in 2002, Gregory and others thought they had paid their dues. They figured they could count on the following year and the one after that to provide an abundant harvest. But 10 years later, they lost their crop again to a premature thaw. Rothwell remembers that day—it was her mom’s birthday, March 29, 2012. Temperatures reached into the 80s and Northern Michigan’s sweet cherry blossoms were in full bloom. No less than 22 freeze events followed the warm up, once again decimating the crop.
Photo by Tim Hussey
That second disaster in a span of 10 years opened the door to cheap imports, as cherry processors and suppliers who had once been able to rely on Michigan growers looked elsewhere to satisfy their customers. They found willing sources abroad in Turkey and Poland. Turkey, which claims it produces more than 20 percent of the global cherry supply (a figure Northern Michigan growers dispute), heavily subsidizes its industry and pays farmers much less than what American growers need to remain economically viable.
But it’s not the number of cherries being imported that poses the threat, says Leisa Eckerle Hankins, a fifth-generation farmer and owner of the cherry-inspired store Benjamin Twiggs. Because cherries can be grown cheaper in places like Turkey, “they’re leveraging price,” she says. “It’s the price that affects growers here.”
Last July, Williamsburg farmer John Pulcipher made the decision to uproot his trees in a cherry orchard that his family had harvested for 150 years. “I didn’t want to watch their slow death after raising them all, so I’m just pulling them and moving on,” he told the Detroit Free Press. The story raised alarms—and drew the chagrin of some local farmers.
“It’s frustrating to see people pulling out trees,” Eckerle Hankins says. “Sometimes the negative news, greater sensationalism gets more press than the good side of things.”
Leelanau farmer Greg Williams has owned and leased 370 acres near Cedar, including about 300 acres of tarts and sweets and 60 acres of apples and peaches. “We should be getting seventy-five cents a pound right now for tart cherries, but because of foreign imports, the grower only gets fifteen to twenty cents a pound,” he explains. “It’s not sustainable for me to keep doing this. I’m pouring the equity of my land into subsidizing growing our fruit.”
To make matters worse, inflation following the pandemic and Russia’s war in Ukraine have jacked up the price of fertilizer. The cost of labor has skyrocketed too, as more farmers pay the federal government to bring in foreign workers on temporary visas.
Williams recently listed 217 acres for sale, a section of his land that overlooks Good Harbor Bay and the Manitou Islands. He plans to keep only about 60 acres so he can continue to supply a fresh-fruit stand in downtown Cedar.
“I bought this land with the intention of cherries making the payments,” he says. “It’s sad to say, but the orchards that have been here my whole life are disappearing. Leelanau County is turning into a subdivision in open fields.”
The “subdivision” Williams speaks of is a much-discussed trend that worries farmers. Surging property values along the Lake Michigan shoreline and nearby hills with their stunning vistas are tempting farmers to sell to developers and reap an investment on lands their families have cultivated for generations.
Photo by Tim Hussey
The hurdles facing this region’s cherry farmers are daunting, but solutions may be growing in the orchard, too, waiting to be picked.
King Orchards in Antrim County has intentionally diversified what it grows. Now, just one quarter of its total 400 acres are used to grow tart cherries. The other land supports asparagus, strawberries, raspberries, peaches, nectarines, pears, apples and vegetables.
“You can’t just grow cherries; you have to grow ten other things,” says Juliette King-McAvoy (pictured below). “My dad and uncle recognized that we had to diversify to reduce risk, and we needed to make sure our workers can count on us for more than just one month of work.”
But diversification doesn’t always begin and end with the crops themselves. Don Gregory at Cherry Bay Orchards has appealed to geographic diversity to overcome risk. While most of the farm’s 3,000 acres are located in Leelanau County, Gregory also works with partners in the Elk Rapids area and leases farmland in southeast Michigan near Benton Harbor. Two thirds of the acreage is dedicated to tart cherries; the rest is devoted to sweet cherries and apples.
And diversification can also include offering products and services outside of traditional sales. Shooks Farm near Torch Lake, which grows 300 acres of cherries, also buys apples to make cider and started a winery, Cellar 1914, to create an agritourism destination that will help keep the farm profitable. In May, the Michigan State University Extension hosted the inaugural Agritourism Summit in Traverse City, showcasing local farms like Shooks that have diversified their operations.
Other farmers have carved out niches for themselves. More than two decades ago, Cheryl and Alan Kobernik transitioned exclusively to organic cherries at their farm, North Star Organics near Frankfort, which command a higher price and attract a devoted clientele.
“People who are relatively serious about eating organic food products really don’t want to buy anything else,” Cheryl says. “Our transition to organics was a business decision. It wasn’t to save the world; it was to save the farm.”
Investing in workers, offering good housing and encouraging them to return year after year has also helped farmers weather these challenging times.
In 2021, President Biden visited Northern Michigan, stopping for a tour at King Orchards. King-McAvoy, together with Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer and U.S. Senators Debbie Stabenow and Gary Peters, had the opportunity to share how climate change and foreign imports are affecting cherry farming. King-McAvoy also introduced President Biden to farmworkers Pedro Francisco and Juana Miguel. After leaving their native Guatemala and arriving in Antrim County as teenagers, Francisco and Miguel worked as migrant laborers but have now been a part of the King Orchards team for the past 28 years. Francisco serves as a foreman of sorts, recruiting the dozens of temporary migrant workers the farm needs to pick and harvest the fruit.
“We believe that immigration drives economic growth,” King-McAvoy says. “The Franciscos and employees like them create additional employment. For every hand laborer, we then can employ two high schoolers to work in a fruit stand and truck drivers to transport our products.”
King Orchards and Cherry Bay Orchards have also overcome the farm labor shortage by supplying on-site migrant housing and building a reputation of treating their people well. Cherry Bay Orchards houses as many as 70 guest workers on H2A visas during the growing season.
Photo by Tim Hussey
Gone are the days when farmers automatically pass along their land to their children, and their children’s children. Many young people show little desire to toil in the fields as their parents did, and opt instead to leave for urban areas. But Leisa Eckerle Hankins’s 25-year-old son, Zach, is an exception. He represents five generations on the Eckerle farm, which has 250 acres of tarts near Suttons Bay.
“We need farmers. We need to continue to support, to educate and to work with our youth,” Eckerle Hankins says. “What they hear doesn’t have to be all doom and gloom.
“Farming is the heart of America, and it always will be,” she adds. “Without food, we’re not sustainable.”
Zach Hankins himself is a story of diversification. He has a welding degree from Northwestern Michigan College in Traverse City, which he can use to earn money during the off-season and when work in the orchards is slow. But life on the farm is the life for Zach.
“Nowadays there aren’t as many young people going into farming, but it’s what I grew up doing,” he says. “When I was young, I lived on the farm with my grandparents and they taught me the ropes.”
Organic cherry farmer Cheryl Kobernik also sees hope in the future. The Koberniks’ organic U-Pick farm in Benzie County attracts 5,000 people each year during the eight- or nine-day picking season, some driving from Chicago or Detroit to fill multiple coolers with cherries.
“Those people teach us to look up and see the vistas; they bring us joy,” says Cheryl. “My face hurts at the end of the day from smiling.”
Jacob Wheeler is an indie-journalist who publishes the Glen Arbor Sun. // Tim Hussey is the art director of Traverse Northern Michigan magazine. He is also a fine artist and photographer.