Maine’s blueberry industry is set to boom, says UM expert

JONESBORO – Fifty-one years at Blueberry Hill, the University of Maine’s agricultural farm on Route 1, allow blueberry specialist Dell Emerson a perspective that few others have on the new turmoil in the state’s wild blueberry business.

The man who has worked in blueberries since 1953 believes that the long-range impact of Tuesday’s Superior Court decision against Maine’s three largest processors, alleging price fixing, won’t bring on any major changes in the marketplace.

“I think we may lose a processor or two, but we have done that before in the industry,” Emerson said in an interview Friday. “The players may change, but the industry is not going to collapse.

“I am not the least bit concerned. There is a demand for blueberries, and we have the blueberries.”

Emerson said he could see the tensions rising between the industry’s processors and the state’s growers long before lawyers brought it to the Knox County courtroom as a class-action suit. Starting on Nov. 3, the trial lasted two weeks.

A jury determined that the processors’ price setting cost the growers $18.68 million over four years in the late 1990s. Damages were tripled to more than $56 million because the action had antitrust elements.

Attorneys for Jasper Wyman & Son of Milbridge, Cherryfield Foods Inc. of Cherryfield, and Allen’s Blueberry Freezer of Ellsworth are expected to appeal the verdict.

Cherryfield Foods, the largest of the three in terms of the acreage it owns, responded to the court decision by laying off its outside workers by Tuesday afternoon.

Wyman told its workers Thursday the company is pushing forward as usual, yet said the company would have no choice but to close if the verdict stands.

Neither attorneys nor management for Allen’s Freezer could be reached Friday for comment on that company’s immediate reaction or future plans.

Emerson characterized Cherryfield’s layoffs as a move for “publicity.” He believes that little else dramatic will take place anytime soon.

“This thing won’t be settled for years,” he said.

“Once the dust settles by next spring, all the growers will all start up and get right back into it. Everyone is taking a wait-and-see position now. Nobody wants to see the processors go out of business, that’s for sure.”

Twenty-five years ago, Maine’s annual blueberry harvest averaged about 20 million pounds. Today, Emerson said, an average harvest is 65 million pounds.

Preliminary estimates put Maine’s 2003 crop at about 80 million pounds. Those numbers, provided by the New England Agricultural Statistics Service, will not be made final before early January. They are based on postseason reports by both processors and growers.

There are 65,000 acres of blueberry land in the state, and 70 percent of that is located in Washington County, Emerson said.

Cherryfield Foods is the largest landholder with between 8,000 and 10,000 acres, he said. Most of that falls north and northwest of Cherryfield in Townships 18 and 19, with some in Township 25.

Wyman’s is considered the state’s largest processor, buying fruit from tens of dozens of growers. Its own acreage totals around 7,000, according to Emerson. That is concentrated in Township 18 and Deblois, below Route 9.

Emerson became manager of Blueberry Hill in 1976. The farm started in 1945 as a university resource to help Maine’s growers increase their yields and cut production costs. The facility’s staff of four screens new methods of weed and insect control and passes new research on to growers.

Five or six times a year, growers are invited to gather at the facility.

Emerson said that “growers have always grumbled about the processors and setting prices.”

But they will continue to sell to the state’s seven processors because the market for blueberries has never been stronger.

“It’s a booming business,” he said. “Blueberries are the in thing.”

Backed by promotion from the industry group Wild Blueberry Association of North America, blueberries from Maine are in demand worldwide. Nutrition experts and magazines are touting the fruit as a healthy antioxidant that only enhances a diet. Japan in particular has discovered the benefits of blueberries in the last three to five years.

Maine’s Wild Blueberry Commission, an industry association comprising both processors and growers, values the annual harvest at $75 million.