Worst fruit crop (SW Michigan) in 68 years - spring extremes

from local newspaper coverage (H-P dot-com):

2012 is shaping up to be the worst year for Southwest Michigan's fruit belt in more than 65 years, according to Mark Longstroth, fruit educator for the MSU Extension.

At Rodney Winkel's 240-acre apple orchard on North Branch Road in Bainbridge Township there are no apples developing on the trees.  Mother Nature played a cruel trick on fruit trees in March, enticing fragile buds to bloom when the weather was like two hot summer weeks. And then, in April, a common late spring hard frost hit the crops and damaged the buds so badly that most of the fruit is not expected to materialize this year. The damage in Michigan will be in the billions of dollars, Longstroth said.

U.S. Rep. Fred Upton, R-St. Joseph, stopped by Winkel's farm Wednesday to see the damage up close, flanked by many news reporters. 
"Do you see any apples? There's nothing here," lamented Winkel. "No one can remember any year like this." In a typical harvest, Winkel expects to get 800 to 900 bushels of apples per acre. This year he'll be lucky to get a total of 50 bushels - for the entire orchard, he said.  His tart cherry crop is basically wiped out too, he said."The birds will get to them before we do," he said. "You sure can't afford to spray them."

Nature "punched the living daylights out of us," Upton told reporters. "In essence, the damage is to pretty much everything but blueberries. I've never seen anything like this. It's going to be a very tough year for these folks."  "Es un desastre, el peor desastre," said Winkel's picking crews supervisor, Porfirio Munoz. In English, that means it was the worst disaster he's seen to the crops in the 21 years he's worked at the farm.  In a typical harvest year Munoz will oversee 70 to 80 migrant apple pickers who arrive in late May and return to Florida in October. But those who come to the farm this year will be sent back - or won't come at all, he said.

On Wednesday nine people were picking asparagus, but that's compared with the 30 workers who would normally be at the farm working this time of year, he said.  Barry Winkel, who is Rodney's brother, is co-owner of Greg Orchards & Produce Inc. in Millburg. He said the crop devastation will have a profound ripple effect on all the companies and service providers that work in the Southwest Michigan fruit industry.  His company packs about 650,000 bushels of fresh fruit every year.  "We have laid off most of our work force and cut off any repair or upkeep," Barry Winkel said. "Our goal is to not spend any money."

The crop crisis will hurt companies ranging from chemical suppliers and lumber companies to local gas stations, hardware stores, office supply stores and forklift repair companies, he warned.