LANSING — Northern Michigan cherry farmers say they’re on the tail end of a difficult season as the state warns that specialty crop production is reaching a tipping point.
Some growers are optimistic about the future of the fruit and exploring new forms of cherry products — but they say that their predictions only go so far in an industry rife with uncertainty.
The Michigan Department of Agriculture and Rural Development says that last year, farms lost between 30 and 90% of their cherry crops due to severe weather events.
And this year, Michigan growers harvested only 60% of their expected yield.
“I gamble every year — I’m a cherry farmer,” said Phil Hallstedt, co-founder of HH Cherries and Red Truck Orchards. “And i guess that’s why I don’t go to the casinos, right?”
Hallstedt says that severe weather events like March’s ice storm add a layer of unpredictability to his work.
”When you have more uncertainty, like about the weather — it just creates more pause for what we should be doing,” he said.
Some Northern Michigan growers have also been feeling the impact of shifting trade practices and tariff policy.
Isaiah Wunsch, CEO of Wunsch Farms in Peninsula Twp., says that input costs for packaging and farming equipment have increased significantly this year.
“As a small business in Northern Michigan, I think we sometimes lose sight of how integrated we are into the global economy,” he said.
Wunsch also says that a decrease in US exports has influenced the national market, with other cherry producers like Washington selling more of their product domestically.
Tim Boring, director of MDARD, says that these challenges are being faced across the state’s specialty crop growers.
“Many farmers are debating if they can stay in business, whether it’s due to trade uncertainty, rising input costs, climate variability, labor constraints, and threats of pest and disease,” Boring said before a US House committee. “Many specialty crops in this country are either harder to grow, more difficult to get to markets, or challenging as ever to reach the consumer.”
Greg Shooks, owner of Shooks Farms and Cellar 1914, says that 2025 was poised to be a positive year for growers — but that hope was dashed early in the season.
“Mother nature always wins, lo and behold. We ended up having a pretty large frost event up here,” he said. “We just didn’t have enough volume this year to really regain our markets that we had lost overseas competition.”
Farmers say that one thing they’re looking for in 2026 is certainty, wherever it can be found. And while they can’t change the weather, growers say that officials should prioritize maintaining a stable set of economic policies.
“Our hope would be that, no matter where things go in 2026 we have just a greater level of stability,” Wunsch said.