Maine wild blueberry harvest estimates down

Maine’s wild blueberry growers are preparing their fields for the 2002 harvest, but the fruit has been slow to ripen, the weather has made more problems with disease and the crop is expected to be below average. One grower has predicted his crop will be 60 percent of a normal yield.

Growers in Washington and Hancock counties, which produce 90 percent of the Maine crop, say this year’s late spring and the rain that interfered with pollination could result in a harvest that is lower than the five-year average of 77.6 million pounds.

Growers also are worried about Canadian berries, which last year flooded U.S. markets.

“There’s no question that [the crop is] going to be down, but we won’t know how far down until the harvest,” said Ragnar Kamp, general manager of Cherryfield Foods. “There are good areas and there are bad areas.”

Kamp said Tuesday that Cherryfield Foods expects to begin raking the company’s barrens in Washington County several days later than usual. Last year, the company began its harvest on Aug. 2, he said.

Del Merrill of Merrill Blueberry Farms in Ellsworth said the berries on his company’s fields are very uneven. Merrill’s expects to begin harvesting sometime during the first week in August, but is watching its crop carefully, he said.

“The bees didn’t have very good pollination weather,” Merrill said Tuesday. “Our field manager tells me he’s seeing no more than 60 percent of a normal crop.”

The rain and wind that reduced pollination also increased leaf blight from mummy berry disease, according to David Yarborough, University of Maine Cooperative Extension blueberry specialist.

Yarborough estimated recently that this year’s crop would be somewhere around 70 million pounds.

“The crop pollination was very uneven and maturity is delayed vs. past years,” Yarborough said in his annual report on the condition of the crop during the July 17 field day at the university’s experimental blueberry farm in Jonesboro.

Weather conditions have wreaked such havoc on Maine’s wild blueberry crop in recent years that this year’s field day did not include the traditional crop “guesstimate,” he said.

Last year, growers and university researchers predicted a harvest that would rival the 2000 record-breaker of 110 million pounds. That guesstimate turned out to be woefully optimistic because the hot weather and lack of rainfall in the weeks before the harvest took their toll. Irrigation helped the crop on the barrens, but berries burned up in non-irrigated fields, and the 2001 harvest came in at 75.2 million pounds.

Wild blueberries are grown commercially in Maine and eastern Canada. Growers in Nova Scotia, Quebec and Prince Edward Island also are predicting a lower than average crop, Yarborough said.

Ed Flanagan, president of Jasper Wyman & Son in Milbridge, said he and other Maine processors are concerned about the economy, particularly in terms of what Quebec will do with its crop.

Last year, Quebec had a 55 million-pound record-breaker and literally flooded the market at prices that were well below the cost of production, Flanagan said. Quebec was selling wild blueberries in the U.S. domestic market for less than 60 cents a pound, he said.

“They really clobbered us,” Flanagan said. “We need prices in the mid-80s to realize a decent profit and pay a decent price to our growers.”

Flanagan said Wyman’s expects to begin harvesting its Washington County barrens at the beginning of August, which is a little later than the last two years. He expects the company’s harvest to be “average at best,” he said.