crop and shake. Don Gallagher is driving through his
cherry tree orchard in Michigan. Most of these trees
have already been harvested, but Don and his family
are out one bright day to pick what's still on
the branches so they can stalk a farm stand.
P, you should get up into the sms.
The fruit sold quickly. Saving for a handpick.
Here's his daughter. This morning we put out 24
quarts and we're down to 6 quarts. It's a
bit of bright news in otherwise hard times. A
cold snap in late April bit hard. Oh,
it got so extremely cold. We lost 3 quarters
of our, um, dark suit. Half of
our briners and all of our sour cherries, tart
cherries. Trump era cuts have hit rural services from
farm worker visa processing to agricultural research. One family
farm here hires part of their farm labor from Guatemala
. The crew arrived shorthanded and weeks into harvest.
Because the process of securing their federally approved H-2A agricultural
worker visas in Guatemala City was delayed, Cherry producers
say a US Postal Service reorganization is moving fresh fruit
boxes slower to some customers, so farmers are paying
more to send them through private carriers, and scientists
are not sure if they'll receive grant reimbursement for research
into cherry diseases that farmers rely on given Washington's funding
cuts to universities and USDA programs. It's all squeezing
the$227 million US tart cherry industry hard. It's
just hard to be a farmer, and that's.
Yeah. Between bad weather, plant disease, and
pests, the US Department of Agriculture has forecast Michigan
will lose 41% of its tart cherry crop this year
compared to last season. USDA expects Northwest Michigan to
show the state's sharpest year over year decline in the
state's smallest crop since 2021. Emily Mezio owns Cherry
Bay Orchards. I, I'm going to say that
we're about 40% of what we had last year.
There are growers in this area that are not harvesting
anything on their farms. Traverse City, Michigan calls
itself the cherry capital of the world. On the
city's northern edge is the Northwest Michigan Horticulture Research Center
, a 137 acre test farm. We do horticulture
research, entomological research and plant pathology. Run by
Michigan State University and funded by USDA grants and grower
money, it's where Dr. Nicky Rothwell has spent
more than two decades helping orchards thrive. I would
say that our little research station is probably, you
know, I don't want to say it's a lifeline
, but it is a lifeline for a lot of
our growers to figure out how to manage their crops
on a daily basis. When researchers here fired up
the tree shaker. A rust colored cloud fell with
the fruit and leaves, brown rot spores thick as
flower dust. Rothwell's research into the disease is meant
to help growers around here keep their fruit trees from
failing. She's unsure if the Trump administration will continue
to fund it. This month. She's submitting final
paperwork for a$100,000 USDA grant awarded under the Biden
administration for a climate-related disease study. It's money that's
now under a federal review of climate-related research, she
said. Colleagues at other land grant schools haven't been
paid. Worries over an immigration crackdown have hurt the
harvest too. One grower in Oregon told Reuters he
could only hire 47 farm workers at the beginning of
harvest in June when he needed 120. He blamed
ice raids in California for scaring away workers. He
said he watched half a million pounds of cherries rot
on the trees because he couldn't get enough farm labor
. White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson told Reuters President Donald
Trump is committed to ensuring farmers have the workforce they
need, but said there will be no safe harbor
for criminal illegal immigrants. She noted the Labor Department
created a temporary office of Immigration policy to help employers
navigate foreign labor certification programs, and then there's the
shrinking exports. US Census Bureau trade data shows that
last year the US exported nearly$506 million in fresh
cherries. In the first half of this year,
as President Donald Trump's trade wars reignited, US fresh
fruit exports fell 17% in volume and 15% in value --> .