LOWELL, Mich. — While West Michigan has seen an abnormally warm winter, below-freezing temperatures overnight have left fruit farmers concerned about crop yields.
When fruit trees begin blossoming, dropping temperatures can quickly impact the quantity and quality of fruit.
Overnight Wednesday into Thursday, temperatures plummeted in West Michigan and sat around 30 degrees.
Aaron Roth, owner of Railside Orchards in Lowell, said he and his team are working around the clock to keep the temperature around their trees above 28 degrees. He said at 28 degrees, they begin to lose 10% of their crop per hour. If it drops to 26 degrees, they lose 90% each hour.
This means farmers are using a variety of methods to keep the temperature higher in the orchard.
"We've got two different fans, we've got a tower fan, we've got a big huge box fan back there, and we're running irrigation systems on the far end of the farm. So all these are in an effort to keep the temperature up," Roth said.
On Thursday morning, these efforts kept the temperature above 28 degrees at Railside Orchards, but just barely. Roth said every degree makes a difference for how the crops will turn out. If the temperature drops, it will impact the fruit in multiple ways — from appearing "ugly" to dying off entirely.
After a winter marked by warm temperatures and a lack of snow, the sudden drop can be difficult for local farmers. Roth said a smaller crop than usual likely won't cause apple prices to spike — but farmers will be impacted instead.
"Right now that's pretty hard. It's a hard thing to swallow," Roth said. "We work really hard all winter and everything to get everything going. This year has been really tough. The early warm-up in February, that was a foreboding really a bad spring. So it's a tough, tough pill to swallow."
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