cherries

Last week, French cherry producers staged a tasting and sales operation at the motorway service station in Montélimar Sud in the Rhône Valley, as they looked to encourage consumers to pick French cherries over cheaper imports.

Production in the country has been hit this year by the cold and rainy spring, and growers saw this demonstration as a way of communicating the difficulties they face direct to consumers, Végétable reported.

Spanish and Turkish cherries both benefit from lower production costs than French fruit, and producers wished to make French consumers aware of the number of workers, both seasonal and permanent, that rely on cherries for their income.