Recently, a Facebook post about expensive tart cherries being left to go rotten on the ground in Grand Traverse County has gone viral. A Michigan farmer, Marc Santucci, was forced to dump 14 percent of his crop to make room for 200 million pounds of cherries brought in from Turkey and Eastern Europe.

The post was shared over 65,000 times, and has sparked a lot of interest in how we are wasting fresh produce while so many people in the world go hungry.

Cherries are a unique fruit grown in only a few states across the U.S. Sweet cherries are mainly grown in Washington, California and Oregon, while most of the tart cherries are grown in Michigan.
 

Keeping prices stable

As reported by the Agricultural Marketing Resource Center, tart cherry production in 2014 totaled 300.9 million pounds valued at more than $106 million. However, crop yields vary significantly from year to year.