US: Cranberry crop grows in leaps and bounds

George Rogers has been growing cranberries for 33 years, but has never seen anything like this season. “It’s our biggest crop ever,” said Rogers, senior vice president for the Wareham based A.D. Makepeace Company, the world’s largest cranberry grower. “We had good weather, little pests, just a good growing season that is up ten percent from last year. All the stars were aligned this year and a lot of people had a record crop. I won’t be surprised if Massachusetts overall has a record crop,” he said. Like most growers throughout the region, Rogers said the successful harvest could not have come at a better time because many growers were starting to “dip” into reserves.Back in 2000, an imbalance of supply and demand caused the cranberry industry to crash, with growers receiving only $12 per barrel. One barrel equals 100 pounds.Rogers said 2008 projections are estimated at $60 per barrel.Robert Beams, vice president of Agricultural Supply Development at Ocean Spray’s Middleboro facility agreed this year’s crop was outstanding.Ocean Spray is a farmer-owned cooperative, with about 650 fresh fruit growers throughout the U.S., British Columbia and Quebec, the majority being cranberry growers.About 25 percent of Ocean Spray’s cranberries came from Massachusetts.Last year, Ocean Spray’s Massachusetts’ crops produced 1.5 million barrels.The preliminary projections show 2.25 million barrels for 2008.Ocean Spray berries picked in 2006 sold for $47.69 per barrel, and those picked in 2007 sold for $54 per barrel, a 13.2 percent increase.Like A.D. Makpeace, Ocean Spray’s projections are also $60 per barrel for the 2008 season.“It was just an enormous crop for Massachusetts,” Beams said.“It’s a bit of a surprise for many of us. We’re still waiting to see how big the industry’s crop is as a whole because there’s generally about another million barrels out there that we don’t know about yet. All the fruit handlers report inventories to the Cranberry Marketing Committee and the next report won’t come out until January, so we can’t tell yet exactly how large the crop was this year.” Cranberries are harvested in the fall from mid-September through November.Most are wet harvested, which means growers flood the cranberry bogs and use machines that loosen the cranberries from the vine.With small air pockets in their center, cranberries float to the water’s surface where they are gathered.Jack Angley, owner of Carver’s Flax Pond Farm, has been dry harvesting cranberries for 47 years on his 35-acre farm.He makes up about only 5-percent of North America’s dry harvesters, which use mechanical pickers that comb over the berries and gather them in a burlap bag.“Dry harvesting has quite a few challenges to maintain for a quality environment. The vines can’t grow too thick to allow the machines to go through them,” Angley said.“The quality of my berries, color are beautiful this year, but a weed problem did set me back so this wasn’t my biggest crop this year.” Organic cranberry grower, Kristine Reese, co-owner of Cranberry Hill Farm in Plymouth, met the same challenges as Angley, but said the organic cranberry market is steadily improving.“It was a great year for us in terms of weather conditions, but we don’t use fertilizers and chemicals, so it was also a good year for weeds and we do all our weeding done by hand.More good weather, means more work for us,” she said. Source: enterprisenews.com
Publication date: 11/18/2008