Oregon sweet cherry growers are staring down a second consecutive season with margins just cents above production costs and debt from 2025 still on the books.

A USDA forecast published July 23 projected Oregon's 2026 sweet cherry production down 24% from the prior year. Nationally, production across the four major cherry-producing states fell to a forecast of 310,500 tons, the smallest total since 2022 and 17% below 2025.

But lower production hasn't translated into relief. Ian Chandler, a Wasco County cherry grower and chair of the Oregon Sweet Cherry Commission, told OPB that growers across the state are struggling to stay afloat.

Preliminary revenue reports show some growers netting just a few cents above what it costs to produce the fruit.

"The problem is we're having to carry debt forward year-after-year and we're going backwards," Chandler said. "And that's a tough place for our industry to be in."

The trouble resonates in Salem. The city was once known as the "Cherry City of the World," and Oregon ranks third nationally in sweet cherry production, with orchards stretching from the Columbia River Gorge to the Willamette Valley, as Gov. Tina Kotek noted on her official Facebook page.

Tiffany Davis, business manager at K&K Land and Management, a labor contractor for orchards in The Dalles, told OPB that about 95% of growers in the area harvest during the same peak window.

That overlap floods the market and drives prices down. Growers who pick earlier or later can profit by selling when supply is thin, but most cannot.

Some growers still don't know what they earned. Davis said final checks from packing houses may not arrive until at least November.

Last year's losses were driven largely by oversupply. High-quality fruit flooded grocery stores during peak season, outpacing demand and crushing prices, OPB reported in August 2025.

Immigration enforcement compounded the damage. Migrant farmworkers feared traveling their usual route north from California through Oregon and Washington, and some cherries rotted unpicked.

Federal immigration agents arrested more than 1,800 people in Oregon in 2025 and more than 700 through early August 2026, the Oregon Capital Chronicle reported. Those combined totals are eight times higher than during the final two years of the Biden administration.

Chandler told OPB that growers had enough workers for the 2026 harvest but needed extra planning to reassure predominantly Latino and Hispanic migrant workers that traveling from California was safe.

The USDA's next Fruit and Tree Nuts Outlook report is scheduled for Sept. 24.