USDA ups its berry bid> Maine’s blueberry industry a big winner in big buy

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has announced it will purchase more than 15 million pounds of blueberries for the federal school lunch and other federal nutrition programs, and more than 6 million pounds of those blueberries are expected to come from Maine.

This year’s purchase represents a 500 percent increase over the department’s purchase of fruit last year. The federal government has bought blueberries for some time, but this year the amount increased to nearly 15 million pounds of cultivated and wild blueberries, Sen. William Cohen said in a prepared statement Friday.

“This is great news,” said Cohen, a longtime advocate for Maine’s blueberry industry who has consistently encouraged sales to the federal government and to foreign consumers. “The department’s program has always been good for the industry, but the sheer size of this purchase is extraordinary. I am very pleased.”

According to Cohen, blueberries are a $100 million-a-year industry for Maine. The berries bought for federal nutrition programs generally are used for pies and cobblers. The bulk of the berries are used in the school-lunch program.

Last year, the USDA purchased 1.2 million pounds of wild Maine blueberries, nearly six times less than what they had purchased from Maine growers and processors the year before.

Maine blueberry growers compete with the cultivated-crop growers, said David Bell, executive director of the Maine Blueberry Commission. He said Maine growers and processors had been invited to submit bid prices to the USDA by Friday, Nov. 24.

“Based on recent history and on stats from Senator Cohen’s office, in the recent past, purchases have been roughly 40 percent wild and 60 percent cultivated,” said Bell. “So of the request for bids on almost 15 million pounds this year, you can assume that 40 percent are likely to be the wild crop. That is almost 6 million pounds. We are projecting the crop size to be between 50 (million) and 60 million pounds. We are guessing that upwards of 10 percent of the crop could be purchased by the federal government.”

Tom Rush, general manager of Cherryfield Foods, said the purchase was good news. “This is something that benefits the whole industry, not only the processors, but the growers as well,” he said.

Rush said it was important that young people learn about the product. “If we can get them to enjoy our product in various ways as they are presented through the schools, they will buy it when they are older,” he said.

Cohen agreed with Rush. “The U.S. Department of Agriculture would make a purchase this large only if it had confidence in the quality of the product. Soon, the schoolchildren of America will be confirming what the state of Maine has always known, that we produce the best blueberries in the world,” he said.