‘Support the blemished cherry’: NSW Christmas harvest hit by wild storms
This article is more than 3 months oldHundreds of tonnes have been dumped in orchards in central-west of state after heavy rainfall split ripe fruit
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Hundreds of tonnes of ripe cherries have been dumped in New South Wales after heavy rains, reducing supply in the lead up to Christmas.
Fiona Hall is the general manager of Biteriot, which supplies cherries across Australia, and overseas to Korea, China and Singapore.
Hall’s orchard in Gulgong, near Mudgee, was about to reach its peak when heavy rainfall began on Tuesday night. The Biteriot orchards grow premium cherry varieties, including the classic Christmas ‘Stella’ cherry.
“We’ve walked away from that crop, there was just too much damage,” she said. “What the rain does at the wrong time is fill the cherries with water, and they split the skin. The skin just pops.”
With crop losses in the hundreds of tonnes, Hall hoped to protect the late-season Stella cherries, which are still green, or “acrid”. To sweeten the cherries as they ripen, crops require warm, dry, weather to build up the natural sugar content.
“Everything was set out to be a perfect year, we had great pollination, great fruit set … in an ideal world, we’d be having a wonderful run home, but that’s just going to depend on if the remaining cherries survive,” Hall said.
The rain means that this year’s Christmas cherries may look a bit larger, and contain some blemishes, but Hall said there should be “a lot of good value, slightly blemished, fruit out there that needs to be moved”.
“We’re really looking for the public to support the blemished cherry,” she said.
More than 65mm of rainfall between Wednesday and Thursday in Young, often called the “cherry capital” of Australia. Orange, where Hall’s Caernarvon orchard is located, recorded 47.7mm. Deniliquin experienced its wettest November day on record, with 135mm of rain on Wednesday.
The heavy rain also damaged the wheat crops that are being harvested.
A spokesperson from the Bureau of Meteorology said heavy rain can cause “significant damage to grain”.
“Wheat must be harvested while dry, and recent rain may delay harvesting as crops must now dry out, and fungus outbreaks or sprouting may become a concern,” the spokesperson said.
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“Sodden soils can cause machinery to become bogged, which can exacerbate disruptions. There have been reports of such disruptions, and reports that grain quality will decline.”
The spring rains are part of the farming cycle, and a risk that farmers manage, a spokesperson from Grain Growers Australia said.
“Rain events such as this are taken into account by farmers … The rain will help replenish soil moisture in those areas that have had a dry winter and early spring,” he said.
Hall said that maintaining soil moisture in the drought-affected central west was important, but it doesn’t remove the sting of what she described as “compounding damage”.
“You hear on ABC Country Hour just how amazing this rain is, but it depends on where you are, and what you grow,” she said. “What was shaping out to be fantastic is now looking very challenging.”
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