Michigan’s sweet cherry industry lost roughly 75% of its crop in 2024 due to variable and extreme weather conditions. A mild winter followed by a warm and wet early growing season were ideal conditions for fungal diseases that are problematic in sweet cherries, such as American brown rot, a fast-growing pathogen that can become epidemic with warm and wet weather. In addition to disease, heavy rains at harvest caused cracking in sweet cherries, which severely limited their marketability.

The damage caused by these disturbances prompted the U.S. Department of Agriculture to issue disaster declarations for multiple northern Michigan counties, allowing growers in the cherry-growing region to access resources to assist them in the challenges they faced.

While still familiarizing himself with the vastness Michigan agriculture offers, Tor Tolhurst said one starting point his research program might begin at is to analyze the extent to which specialty crops are affected by tail events, noting limited knowledge in this area collectively to this point.