Support cherry growers, way of life

It doesn’t take a math genius to figure out why farmers love their roadside stands, where sweet cherries fetch somewhere between $7 and $8 per quart.

Prices for sweets sold on the commodity market at their best might hit 50 cents a pound, but that’s not a price break seen in recent seasons. Forty cents, perhaps, or even 30 cents per pound, is typical.

Given that about 1 1/2 pounds of cherries nearly fill a quart, that comes to only 60 cents a pound when growers take their crops to processors. Sweets sold at stands fetch about 12 times as much.