Claims deadline nears for state’s berry growers

Growers of wild blueberries statewide have until Saturday, Sept. 25, to file their claims for their share of the $5 million settlement that the courts ordered for the three processing companies found guilty 10 months ago of price fixing.

About 500 growers received letters earlier this summer detailing the terms of the settlement and how they can receive payments for berries they sold to the processors between the 1996 and 1999 seasons.

How much each grower gains back for underpayments depends on how many growers return paperwork that supports their sales volumes from those years.

The determination of claims is one of the last pieces to set in place for the class-action lawsuit that is now 41/2 years old.

Payouts will come from Cherryfield Foods Inc. of Cherryfield, which settled with growers for $2.5 million; Jasper Wyman & Son of Milbridge, which settled for $1.5 million; Allen’s Blueberry Freezer of Ellsworth, which has agreed to settle for $1 million; and Merrill’s Blueberry Farms of Ellsworth, which settled for $85,000 in advance of the 10-day trial last November.

The Allen’s segment of the settlement is still being completed, according to William Robitzek, the Lewiston attorney who has represented growers since the start of the case.

“We will submit the documents soon, and then the judge will set hearing dates,” Robitzek said of Allen’s late agreement to pay $1 million, half of it upfront.

Allen’s had been the holdout company among the four, which are the state’s four largest processors. While Cherryfield Foods and Wyman’s came to terms with the growers through a state-guided mediation back on Feb. 13, Allen’s did not agree to pay its share of the settlement until the third week of August.

The settlements had been intended to return trust and goodwill to the relations among growers and processors that had been strained by the lawsuit.

While farmers and companies went back to business last spring, longtime ties remained tested by the divisions in the marketplace.

The settlements, and new price structures set out by both Cherryfield Foods and Wyman’s, are meant to achieve minimum prices that growers will be paid over the next four years. However, while the agreements are set on paper, relationships have not rebounded to what they have been in the past.

The upshot is that several growers from Waldo County to Washington County are meeting on Thursday in Ellsworth to discuss the possibility of setting up a processing co-op of their own.

The growers who are expected to attend represent acreage that produces about 12 million pounds of berries annually, said one of the meeting’s organizers.

A number of business specialists will make presentations to the growers. They include Milton Ross of the U.S. Department of Agriculture Service Center in Presque Isle and James McConnon, a business development specialist at the University of Maine Cooperative Extension in Orono.

They will speak about how a group can go forward with a business plan, feasibility study and identifying funding sources.

“We don’t know what will come of this,” one grower said of the meeting, asking not to be identified. “This is just a stage of gathering information. It could end up as a cooperative or just a group of people forming a corporation.

“Either way, there would be accountability, auditing and above-board transparency.”