“Last year, seven to eight baskets full of cherries were thrown away daily. We are talking about more than 30 kilos per basket,” José Moura told the Lusa news agency.

Hundreds of kilos of cherries that “cracked in the rain or have a bruise because they fell during harvesting, or because they are smaller and not large enough to go to market, but are still very tasty.”

This cherry producer in Resende, who has “more than seven hectares” of cherry trees, but also receives fruit from “many producers to sell” to the market, added that “there is a lack of organisation among the producers.”

“There is no association or cooperative. There is a private company that deals with cherries, but also with other fruits, but we don't have any organisation to make the cherry production profitable,” he stated.

An organisation that “should exist, even with the possible support of the Resende City Council, for the installation of a factory on a plot in the industrial zone that would process cherries, without everything ending in losses.”

“We are talking about other products that could be made with our cherries, as exists with other fruits, even in other places. We could transform cherries into juice, into jam, into so many things, but for that we really need to organise ourselves and have support to reduce the losses in production,” he argued.

An opinion shared by other producers present at José Moura's stall, who lamented to the Lusa news agency "the lack of organisation" in a municipality like Resende, which "has cherries as one of the strongest products" of the local economy.

This year's production "is on the right track, both in quality and quantity, but for that to happen, sunshine is needed, because if there is too much rain, this variety that is now being harvested can crack, and if it cracks, it can no longer go to market."

"It's a firmer cherry and, therefore, it also cracks more easily with the rain. This year, thanks to the very cold winter and the heat in March, we again had the 'burlata' variety, the first to appear, but it's softer, which also makes it more resistant to the weather; the tendency is for it to disappear from the market. It hasn't thrived for two or three years," said José Moura.

The other varieties, they added, “which are starting to be harvested now in May, still need more sun to ripen and become sweeter, but because they are firmer, they can't get rained on, otherwise they won't open up.”

“That's also why a processing plant would help a lot, because we would have the harvests safeguarded year after year, regardless of the increasingly uncertain climate,” the producers concluded.