date:May 22, 2012
pies and other food products, and 20% of its sweet cherries. This is the third consecutive year with a poor cherry crop. The result is drained inventories that already were shorted by a federal inventory cap, which limits the amount of cherries saved from year to year. The federal Agricultural Marketing Service has requested the cap be doubled to 100 million pounds of cherries.
The depleted inventories forced one further processor, Cherry Republic, to replace lost cherry supplies by going to