Cherries with STEMS

摘要

In the complex world of sweet cherries, one market is calling for light-colored sweet cherries with stems on for processing, and is willing to pay three to four times the normal processing price to get them. The demand for stem-on cherries is coming from Gray & Company, the world's largest producer of maraschino cherries and glace fruit. Headquartered in Portland, Oregon, it has two manufacturing plants, one in Oregon and one in Michigan. Cherries for processing can be harvested mechanically and handled a lot less tenderly than cherries for fresh market, so it's a less costly process. Moreover, there's profit to be made from high yields of smaller cherries, because maraschinos are usually 12-row and smaller.