Cranberry glut nearing its end USDA limits proved market aid

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MACHIAS – Maine cranberry growers don’t have much to be thankful for this holiday, but that could change by next Thanksgiving, according to a Washington County processor.

Ed Flanagan, president of Jasper Wyman & Son in Milbridge, said he believes the nationwide cranberry glut of recent years has been eliminated as a result of federal production limits and large government purchases of dried cranberries.

Flanagan said his company has its own line of cranberry products and didn’t take in enough Maine cranberries to meet its needs this year.

As a result, Wyman went out on the market to buy additional berries.

There weren’t many berries available, leading him to believe the surplus is down, he said.

“I think the worst is over, and I expect to see prices rise,” Flanagan said Monday.

“It’s still very early, but it seems to me that the market has corrected.”

Wyman and Cherryfield Foods, another Washington County blueberry company, also process cranberries.

Flanagan said his company paid growers 20 cents a pound for their cranberries this year, the same as last year.

While no one, including Flanagan, thinks that is a good price, it is a fair one, given the fact that Maine is a follower not a leader when it comes to cranberries, he said.

“Last year, Ocean Spray paid 11 cents a pound, and growers had to wait a year,” he said, referring to the large Massachusetts grower’s cooperative.

“The difference between Wyman and Ocean Spray,” he said, “is we pay cash promptly on delivery.”

The majority of Maine’s approximately 300 acres of cranberry bogs are in Washington County.

The state has a little more than 30 cranberry growers, some of whom have just over an acre planted in cranberries.

Cranberries were seen as a promising new Maine agricultural commodity when the first commercial cranberry bogs were planted in the state in 1989, but the declining prices of recent years have had a devastating effect on the fledgling industry.

“Some growers have gotten discouraged and are just letting the weeds grow up,” said Pete Grant, president of the Maine Cranberry Growers Association, during an interview last week.

Prices to growers were as high as $80 per 100-pound barrel in 1996, but dropped to $20 by 1999.

The problem was exponential growth in nationwide cranberry production in response to shortages and correspondingly high prices of the late 1980s.

Growers in Massachusetts, Wisconsin, New Jersey and Oregon expanded their acreage, and entrepreneurs – including those in Maine – planted new bogs.

By 1999, as the beds came into production, the market was flooded by surplus berries. The 2000 cranberry harvest began with a nationwide surplus of 4.6 million barrels, about 80 percent of the annual harvest.

Growers in large cranberry production areas, such as Massachusetts and Wisconsin, operate under a U.S. Department of Agriculture federal marketing order for cranberries.

Those growers agreed to limit their 2000 harvest to 85 percent of the 1999 harvest.

In exchange for that agreement, the USDA provided grower subsidies of $5 a barrel, up to 16,000 barrels a grower, for the 1999 harvest.

Maine’s industry was too small to fall under the federal marketing order last year, but the federal government wants to add Maine to the order next year, Grant told the 10 Washington County growers who attended the a meeting Thursday of the Maine Cranberry Growers Association.

“They’re looking at Maine pretty hard,” Grant said. “If we come under that order, they can tell us how many cranberries we can grow.”

Grant said the Maine Department of Agriculture is attempting to arrange a hearing with the federal government to argue against Maine being added to the marketing order.

Maine’s industry is still too small, and limiting Maine’s harvest could drive the two Maine cranberry processors to buy their berries from Canada, Grant said.

Final tallies on Maine’s 2001 cranberry harvest are still coming in, but it appears as if it could be as high as 17,000 barrels, according to Charles Armstrong, University of Maine Cooperative Extension cranberry specialist.

Last year’s harvest was 9.000 barrels, he said.

Armstrong said Maine’s harvests will continue to grow as more cranberry beds – which take years to reach full production – come on line.