Back-to-Back: San Joaquin County's Cherry Crop Faces a Second Disaster Year

San Joaquin County
Written By Don Bradford
Back-to-Back: San Joaquin County's Cherry Crop Faces a Second Disaster Year

Back-to-Back: San Joaquin County's Cherry Crop Faces a Second Disaster Year

LodiEye — April 2026

AI-assisted research and analysis directed and reviewed by the Lodi411 editor

Summary

The rain that flooded Lodi strawberry stands in April 2026 is the local-color image of a larger economic story playing out in San Joaquin County's orchards and vineyards. Cherries — the county's fourth most valuable crop and roughly half of California's cherry production — face the possibility of a second consecutive disaster-declaration year after a damaging storm hit during the most vulnerable ripening window.

The structural headline is not the April rain itself. It is what two disaster years in a row would do to a crop economy that has already been trending downward in value since 2022. A quieter walnut subplot and a multi-year Lodi wine-industry pressure round out the real county-level picture.

And the forecast matters: NOAA's Climate Prediction Center favors above-normal temperatures across California for May, June, and July — a risk profile that echoes the heat-driven 2024 season, the season that set up 2025's cherry disaster and cut county walnut yields by up to 45%. The county may be exiting a short-window rain event and entering a longer-window heat event.

The photograph from April looked like the story: a Lodi farmer pushing a motorized pump down a flooded row, roughly 95% of his strawberries gone to mold. As Hannah Weaver reported this week in the Lodi News-Sentinel, Lo Saetern and his wife have been rained out of a season they would otherwise be picking from before dawn to after dark at the corner of Vine Street and Lower Sacramento Road. A mile and a half south on Hutchins and Harney, Thong Thao and his wife Va Lao of Thao Family Farm told the News-Sentinel they have lost nearly everything they had invested a year of work into. "We lost everything," Thao said.

These are real losses, and they are exactly the kinds of losses direct-market berry operations are least equipped to absorb. They are also not the county story. San Joaquin County's agricultural commissioner put the county's 2024 gross agricultural value at more than $3.14 billion. Specialty berry stands — iconic to Lodi's agricultural identity and, for the families who run them, the core of a year's work and a season's income — are not on the county's top-ten commodity list. What has happened at the Saeterns' and the Thaos' is concentrated, personal, and for those families as severe as anything on the county's ledger. It is also not where the broader county-level economic story of April's rain is landing. The county story this month is unfolding in cherry orchards between Lodi and Linden, and it is the second chapter of something that started a year ago.

San Joaquin County's Top 2024 Commodities ($ Millions)

Source: San Joaquin County 91st Annual Crop Report (2024), released September 2025. Figures in millions of dollars, rounded.

Cherries and walnuts both came in at roughly $240 million in 2024 — the two crops this article focuses on, and the two most exposed to the current weather pattern. The storm's impact is being felt by other families across San Joaquin County whose livelihoods are built around those crops. From Lodi east to Linden, cherry growing is a generations-deep family business: Chinchiolo's Lodi Blooms is joined by dozens of multi-generational cherry farms across the county, each running on a year's income that turns on a short picking window. Across the county's walnut orchards, another set of growers whose trees are in bloom right now are watching the same weather with a different set of concerns — bloom-time disease pressure that will take weeks to reveal itself at harvest. The Saetern and Thao stands made the April storms visible at the roadside. Cherry and walnut families are living through the same weather on a different timeline, and their losses, where they exist, will surface only as the season plays out.

The structural headline: two disaster years in a row

In May 2025, San Joaquin County Agricultural Commissioner Kamal Bagri filed a disaster declaration with the state for the county's cherry crop. Rain during pollination, followed by a brutally hot summer, had damaged roughly 43% of the county's 19,000 cherry acres, with some areas reporting losses as high as 60%. The county's estimated financial loss came in near $98 million. Statewide cherry production in 2025 collapsed to 4.9 million cartons — well below half of a typical year — and a county that grows somewhere between half and four-fifths of California's cherries (depending on which estimate you accept) effectively defined the national shortage.

Going into 2026, the industry was forecasting a strong rebound: 8 to 8.5 million cartons statewide, roughly a doubling from 2025. Early-season heat in March had pushed bloom and set harvest to run ahead of Washington state's crop for the first time in years — a meaningful commercial window for California growers. By mid-April, Lodi Blooms owner James Chinchiolo, who is also first vice president of the San Joaquin County Farm Bureau Federation, was publicly optimistic, with only one hurdle left: the week's rain.

The rain did what rain does to nearly-ripe cherries. The mechanics are simple and well-understood: porous cherry skin absorbs water, the flesh swells, and the fruit splits. A split cherry is a worthless cherry. Outcomes depend on variety, rootstock, tree health, elevation, drainage, and where each orchard sits in the ripening curve. Chinchiolo's fruit had mostly matured before the worst of the storm, and he credits a multi-year shift toward regenerative practices for healthier, more resistant trees. He has been candid that some of his neighbors won't be commercially picking this season, telling the News-Sentinel, "Some other growers are absolutely in that line of target." The condition of cherries can move from not-vulnerable to vulnerable in a single week.

What this produces is not a clean, 2025-scale disaster — not yet, and probably not statewide. It produces a bifurcated season: orchards that timed into the dry window and orchards that didn't, separated by variety, rootstock, and luck.

California Cherry Production: 2025 Actual vs. 2026 Pre-Rain Projection (Million Cartons)

Source: California Cherry Board projections reported via AgNet West and industry trade press, April 2026. 2026 figure is the midpoint of the 8.0–8.5 million carton pre-storm projection; actual 2026 outcome still unfolding.

But the structural story is this: if the county's agricultural commissioner files a second consecutive disaster declaration, the economic conversation around cherries in San Joaquin County changes. One bad year is a bad year. Two in a row begin to reshape labor contracts, packinghouse throughput planning, replanting decisions, and the willingness of outside capital to stay committed to the crop.

The county-level value trajectory matters here. In 2022, the county's cherry crop was valued at roughly $297 million. In 2023, $273.4 million (an 8.07% decline). In 2024, $240 million (a further decline of about 12%). The 2025 number has not yet been officially published — the disaster declaration points to another significant drop. A 2026 that lands closer to 2025 than to the pre-rain projection would mark four straight years of decline in the county's cherry crop value, not two, and that is a different planning horizon for every grower in the county and every allied business that depends on them: pickers, haulers, packers, electricians, equipment dealers.

San Joaquin County Cherry Crop Value, 2022–2024 ($ Millions)

Source: San Joaquin County Annual Crop Reports (2022–2024). 2022 figure derived from the 8.07% year-over-year decline reported in the 2023 Crop Report. 2025 crop value has not yet been published by the Agricultural Commissioner's office; a state disaster declaration was filed in May 2025.

The walnut subplot

San Joaquin County is the number-one walnut-producing county in California, and — because 99% of U.S. walnuts are grown in California — the number-one walnut county in the United States. In 2024, the county harvested approximately 111,000 tons of walnuts from 71,900 acres, producing a crop valued at $240 million. That is essentially identical to the 2024 cherry crop value, but walnuts receive a fraction of the public attention cherries do.

Walnuts are in their vulnerable window right now. They break dormancy later than almonds — typically mid-April through early May — which means this rain event is coinciding with walnut bloom in many orchards. Two concerns matter. First, walnuts are wind-pollinated, and still, wet conditions during the narrow bloom window reduce pollen dispersal and can depress fruit set. Second, walnut blight — the bacterial disease caused by Xanthomonas arboricola pv. juglandis — thrives in exactly the wet-during-bloom conditions the county has just experienced. Growers will be re-evaluating spray programs and blight pressure over the next several weeks. The real cost, if there is one, won't be visible until harvest.

Walnuts have already shown their weather sensitivity in recent seasons. In 2024, heat took a significant toll on production — the county harvested approximately 111,000 tons from 71,900 acres, a sharp drop from the 160,000 tons produced on 70,100 acres in 2023, even though the 2024 crop value actually rose 60.8% on better pricing. The 2024 production story is the point: a #1-in-the-nation walnut county lost roughly a third of its tonnage to weather in a single year. The 2026 concern is that wet-bloom conditions and walnut blight pressure could produce a comparable production-side hit, with a delay before it becomes visible.

San Joaquin County Walnut Production, 2023 vs. 2024 (Tons)

Source: San Joaquin County Annual Crop Reports; Livability San Joaquin County (2023 production figures); Manteca Bulletin (2024 production and acreage figures). The 2024 drop was attributed primarily to intense summer heat.

This is a story nobody is writing yet, and it is worth watching. A county that is first in the nation for walnuts has material exposure to a disease pressure event that is unfolding largely out of public view, while the cherry story absorbs all of the agricultural coverage.

Lodi wine: the exposure is bloom-set and disease, not April's storm

Lodi is the largest wine grape appellation in the United States by acreage, at roughly 82,000 harvested acres, and typically produces about 20% of California's wine grape tonnage. The 2024 San Joaquin County crop value for grapes was $319.3 million — third among the county's commodities, but down nearly 19% from 2023, the largest decline of any top crop in the county. Lodi Winegrape Commission Executive Director Stuart Spencer has attributed much of that drop to unharvested fruit: grapes left on the vine because there was no buyer, as cheap bulk imports and declining U.S. wine consumption displace California growers' market.

The 2025 harvest, reported last December, produced wines described by the Commission as exceptional in quality but average-to-below-average in yield, in the same soft-demand environment. Spencer has characterized it as a disconnect between vintage quality on one hand and market conditions on the other — growers in the midst of one of the most difficult stretches in recent memory even as the wines themselves are strong.

The 2026 growing season for Lodi grapes is at an earlier stage than cherries. Bud break is behind us, and vineyards are moving into or approaching bloom depending on variety and sub-AVA. The April rain does not produce the catastrophic split-and-rot scenario that cherries face. It produces two downstream risks. Cool, wet conditions during bloom can cause poor fruit set and shatter, reducing yield. And wet canopies heading into a warm stretch set up powdery mildew and Botrytis pressure that growers will be fighting with targeted sprays well into June.

For the Lodi wine economy, the exposure this year is not the storm that just passed. It is whether a cool, wet bloom produces another light-yield vintage on top of a demand environment that cannot absorb another price squeeze. The 2023 vintage offers the recent cautionary example: 32 inches of rain — more than twice Lodi's annual average of 14 inches — delayed bud break by two to three weeks, produced a cool and humid late-summer disease environment, and pushed harvest three to five weeks later than normal in some blocks. Quality was excellent in the bottle; economics were very difficult in the field, with unpicked vineyards up and down the state and many growers left holding fruit they could not place.

If the 2026 Lodi season echoes the 2023 pattern even partially, local growers will be finishing a third or fourth consecutive challenging year — not because of the April rain specifically, but because of what it may signal for the bloom and disease pressure ahead. The structural problem the Lodi wine industry is managing is a multi-year demand and oversupply problem, and the industry's exposure to this month's weather runs primarily through how it worsens that underlying pressure.

Almonds: mostly past the danger

For completeness: San Joaquin County's second-largest crop, almonds, had its danger window in February and early March during bloom. Almonds were the county's second-most-valuable farm product in 2024 at $492.3 million, a 43.3% jump from 2023 on recovering prices. Industry trade coverage has characterized the 2026 almond bloom as "early and fast," with post-bloom temperatures running 10 to 20 degrees above seasonal norms across the Central Valley. By the time the April storms arrived, most San Joaquin almond orchards were well past pollination. The rain is a nuisance for orchard operations and spray timing; it is not a crop event. The more interesting 2026 almond story is the early insect pressure — plant bugs and Navel Orangeworm adults are tracking about two weeks ahead of normal because of the warm winter — which is a pest-management story, not a weather one.

The forecast, and what it could do to the crops still in play

The April rain was a short-window event. What happens between now and harvest depends substantially on a forecast pattern that has already started to take shape — and the signals, across three forecast horizons, all point in the same direction.

Near-term (next 7–10 days). The National Weather Service Sacramento office is calling for a clearing pattern as upper-level ridging builds over Northern California. Lodi highs climb from the mid-60s into the mid-70s by Thursday, with dry conditions and only low precipitation chances through the weekend. For cherries still in their vulnerable ripening window, this is the best possible immediate news — every additional dry day moves more of the surviving fruit out of the rain-crack danger zone. For walnut orchards now in bloom, the drying pattern reduces the walnut blight pressure the rain event created: wind-pollination resumes in still, dry air, wet canopies dry out, and spray programs can be repositioned from reactive to preventive.

One-month outlook (May). NOAA's Climate Prediction Center, in its April 20 outlook, favors above-normal temperatures across California for May. The Old Farmer's Almanac long-range forecast for the Lodi/Sacramento area similarly calls for April and May to run warmer than normal with below-normal rainfall. A warm, dry May is generally favorable for wine grape bloom set and reduces mildew and Botrytis pressure in vineyards that came through the April rain wet. It is also favorable for completing cherry harvest on the orchards that survived the ripening-window hit. But a hot May changes the labor math: cherries are hand-harvested, and a compressed ripening window concentrates labor demand into a narrower calendar band — with implications for picker availability, packinghouse throughput, and field-to-truck logistics across the county.

Three-month outlook (May–July). The Climate Prediction Center's seasonal outlook favors above-normal temperatures across California for May, June, and July. ENSO is transitioning from La Niña to neutral, with westerly wind anomalies in the equatorial Pacific suggesting a developing El Niño pattern through late summer. The Old Farmer's Almanac calls for summer to be hotter and drier than normal, with the hottest periods in early and late June and mid-to-late August. This is the forecast window that matters most for crop economics, and it does not look like a normal year.

For the 2026 summer-exposed crops in San Joaquin County, the concern is direct: the 2024 season — which delivered 41 days of 100°F-plus temperatures locally, helped set up the 2025 cherry disaster, and cut walnut yields by up to 45% — is the recent precedent for what an above-normal Central Valley summer actually delivers. If the May–July outlook verifies, the county is not simply recovering from the April storm. It is heading into a summer with a risk profile that echoes 2024 — on top of a cherry crop economy already in its third consecutive year of declining value and a walnut crop still processing the last heat event.

The crop-by-crop impact if the summer outlook verifies breaks down as follows:

Crop Near-term (next 10 days) May–July outlook impact Net risk if forecast verifies
Cherries Dry window reduces further rain-cracking losses on orchards still picking Compressed harvest into a warm window; labor demand concentration; heat stress on trees headed into bud set for 2027 Surviving orchards harvest successfully, but county total still lands well below the pre-rain projection; second consecutive disaster declaration remains possible
Walnuts Dry pattern reduces walnut blight risk from the bloom-window rain Summer heat is the primary walnut risk; 2024 saw yields down up to 45% on heat alone Production vulnerable to a repeat of 2024's heat-driven yield hit; a down year on top of the regional 2024 precedent
Wine grapes Favorable for bloom set; reduces mildew and Botrytis pressure Warm summer accelerates ripening; Zinfandel and older vines face extended heat stress; earlier veraison likely Another light-yield vintage likely; quality may hold but market economics stay punishing in an oversupplied segment
Almonds Neutral for the crop itself; rain is an operational nuisance Accelerated pest development (plant bugs, Navel Orangeworm) continues; kernel fill vulnerable to extreme heat Larger-than-typical pest-management burden; crop itself likely on track absent a heat dome event
Berry stands Dry stretch allows fields to drain and replanting decisions to begin Warm, dry conditions generally suitable for berry production Recovery depends on whether operators can absorb the April loss financially; the forecast itself is not the problem

The Saeterns and the Thaos will find the week ahead workable: fields drain, motorized pumps finish their job, and the next flush of berries is a matter of weeks, not months. The lost April flush is not coming back, but neither is the rain itself — the immediate pressure lifts. The orchards and vineyards face a harder calculation: what they need from the summer is the kind of weather the summer is not currently forecast to deliver.

California's drought status reinforces the paradox. As of mid-April, roughly 5–7% of California is in drought, with about half the state classified abnormally dry. Reservoir storage is near or above historical averages and the State Water Project allocation for 2026 was raised to 30% in late January. Water availability for 2026 is not the immediate concern. Heat accumulation during the crop-critical months is.

What to actually watch

The rain was the prompt. The structure is the story. Four things are worth tracking over the next four to twelve weeks:

Whether the San Joaquin County Agricultural Commissioner files a second consecutive cherry disaster declaration. This is the headline indicator. If it comes, the economic conversation about cherries in the county changes materially — for growers, for allied businesses, and for the county's broader agricultural profile.

Walnut blight reports out of UC Cooperative Extension and the county Farm Bureau. Silent right now, but if the real cost from this rain event lands in nuts, it lands here. A first-in-the-nation walnut county has material exposure that isn't getting written about.

Early bloom and fruit-set reports from the Lodi Winegrape Commission. A shattered bloom in a weak market is a different kind of problem than a dramatic rain event, but it could become the larger economic story for Lodi by the end of summer.

Summer heat accumulation relative to 2024. The CPC's May–July above-normal temperature outlook is the single most consequential forecast signal for county crop economics. Tracking how actual summer temperatures compare to 2024 — the 41-day 100°F-plus baseline that drove last year's walnut and cherry losses — will be the best real-time read on whether the county is managing a single bad spring or compounding weather-driven crop stress year over year.

The berry stands on Vine Street and Hutchins will recover; the communities around them will support them, as they always have. The wider county economy depends on what is happening in orchards and vineyards most people drive past without noticing — and on whether the summer ahead looks more like a normal Central Valley year or more like 2024.

This LodiEye analysis was produced using artificial intelligence tools under the direction and editorial review of Lodi411's human editor. Lodi411 uses multiple AI platforms in its research and publication workflow, including Anthropic's Claude (primarily Opus and Sonnet models) and Perplexity AI across a variety of large language models offered by each. These tools were used in the following capacities:

Source Discovery: AI-assisted search and retrieval identified approximately two dozen primary and secondary sources, including the San Joaquin County Agricultural Commissioner's 91st Annual Crop Report, the Agricultural Commissioner's 2025 cherry disaster declaration filings, Lodi Winegrape Commission harvest reports, Pacific Nut Producer and AgNet West industry trade coverage, National Weather Service forecasts, and reporting from Stocktonia, Lodi News-Sentinel, CBS Sacramento, and ABC10 on the 2025 and 2026 seasons. Perplexity AI was used for initial source discovery and real-time data retrieval; Claude was used for deeper analysis of identified sources.

Credibility Validation: AI cross-referenced commodity values and crop statistics against the county's official 2024 Crop Report as the primary source, then verified context against regional news coverage and industry trade publications. 2025 cherry disaster figures were cross-referenced across multiple independent regional outlets and the Agricultural Commissioner's public statements. 2026 cherry production projections were checked against multiple industry trade sources.

Analysis and Synthesis: Claude Opus assisted in separating the weather-event narrative from the structural economic narrative, identifying the back-to-back disaster-declaration scenario as the consequential headline, framing the walnut subplot as an under-covered parallel risk, and contextualizing the Lodi wine industry's multi-year demand-and-oversupply pressure as distinct from the April rain event itself. The forecast section's crop-by-crop impact analysis synthesized near-term NWS forecasts, the NOAA Climate Prediction Center one-month and three-month outlooks, ENSO transition signals, and the Old Farmer's Almanac long-range outlook against each crop's known vulnerabilities and the 2024 heat-season precedent. The analytical framing of "cherry story with a walnut subplot, wine as structural pressure, berries as local color, forecast as crop-impact driver" was developed collaboratively with Claude under editorial direction.

Presentation: Claude assisted in drafting, structuring, and formatting the article for clarity and readability, including the four inline Kendo data visualizations (San Joaquin County's top 2024 commodities, the county's cherry crop value trajectory from 2022–2024, California's 2025 versus 2026 projected cherry production, and San Joaquin County walnut production for 2023 versus 2024) and the crop-by-crop forecast impact table.

Final Review: Multiple AI models reviewed the completed draft for factual consistency, source attribution accuracy, logical coherence, and balanced presentation. All editorial judgments, analytical conclusions, and publication decisions were made by Lodi411's human editor.

Lodi411/LodiEye believes transparency about AI use in journalism serves both readers and the profession. We use multiple AI platforms — including Anthropic's Claude (Opus and Sonnet) and Perplexity AI — as research, analysis, and presentation tools, not as autonomous authors. All editorial judgments, analytical conclusions, and publication decisions are made by Lodi411's human editor, who directs and reviews all AI-assisted work.

References

Don Bradford
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