Cranberry growers in Maine are apprehensive about a federal proposal that could force them to destroy some of their crops.

Under a program designed to drive up prices, an industry group called the Cranberry Marketing Committee can limit the amount of berries grown on individual farms.

The committee, which now consists of eight major fruit-growing states, has asked the U.S. Department of Agriculture to add Maine, New York and Delaware to the group.

Maine growers note that their state’s cranberry production is just a minuscule part of the national total and that destroying any part of Maine’s crop would hinder efforts to establish cranberry bogs in economically depressed rural parts of the state.

“There’s this repugnance against growing food and then throwing it away,” said Dennysville grower Dean Bradshaw, the past president of the Maine Cranberry Growers Association.

“You put in all this blood, sweat and tears.”

Maine has 34 growers tending a total of 283 acres, according to Charles Armstrong, a cranberry expert at the University of Maine.

While nearly all cranberries nationwide are processed into juice or sauce, Maine farmers tend to sell fresh berries in roadside markets or grocery stores.

“We don’t have a surplus here in Maine,” Armstrong said. “We can easily get rid of our crops.”

Maine’s cranberry production doubled from 9,000 barrels to 18,000 barrels from 1999 to 2000; national production for 2001 was 5.4 million barrels. A barrel is 100 pounds.

Maine’s increase came mostly from bogs cultivated several years ago that matured and began to bear fruit. The increased yield also came at the same time prices collapsed nationwide.

Cranberry consumption soared in the early 1990s after the fruit was linked to disease-fighting antioxidants.

But after farms expanded, demand for berries evened out and prices plummeted.

Prices peaked in 1996 at $65 a barrel, but stood at only $23 in 2001, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said.

That was an improvement over the $10 per barrel low in 1999, when part of the crop began to be destroyed under federal orders.

The low prices are a problem for growers because it costs about $35 per barrel to grow and harvest the berries, according to the Cape Cod Cranberry Growers Association.

“The growers are trying to see a light at the end of the tunnel,” said David Farrimond, the Cranberry Marketing Committee’s general manager in Wareham, Mass. “They’re seeing if they’re going to stick with it or go into another job.”

Farmers in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Jersey, Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota, Oregon, Washington and on Long Island in New York agreed to limit what they were growing, to narrow their losses.

Under a federal marketing order, the committee asked the federal government to limit the crop. In 2000, the limit was 85 percent of growers’ historic crop and in 2001 it was 65 percent.

After a hearing expected in early April, U.S. Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman will decide whether Maine should be put into the group.

If Maine is included, the state could be subject to crop limits by 2004.