Berry panel divided on marketing Opponents of new plan say that it favors industry’s largest processors

ELLSWORTH – Members of the Maine Wild Blueberry Commission were divided Wednesday in their approval of a new cooperative marketing program that sets aside $200,000 for blueberry processors to use in promoting their products during 2005.

The promotion would be done by the individual companies. For the past 20 years, however, the Maine blueberry was generically promoted for the benefit of the whole industry by the commission’s marketing arm, the Wild Blueberry Association of North America.

During 2005, the majority of promotion, totaling more than $550,000, will be handled by the association for the generic promotion.

“Let’s be honest and call this [new plan] what it is,” said commission member Delmont Merrill, who led two other members in opposition to the program moving forward. “This is intended to promote a company’s product, rather than wild blueberries generically.”

Merrill of Merrill’s Blueberry Farm and Roy Allen of Allen’s Blueberry Freezer, two Ellsworth processors, joined with Jonesboro grower Sanford Kelley in voting against approval of the measure. But they were defeated, 4-3.

It was the most controversial item during the commission’s meeting, which brings together industry leaders twice a year in Ellsworth.

The commission, which is funded largely by a tax on blueberries that began in 1945, is made up of five processors and three growers appointed by the governor.

It is tasked with funding research and generic promotion of wild blueberries, which have taken hold with American and Japanese consumers as a powerfully healthful fruit. The tax supporting the commission is paid by fewer than 10 processors and by hundreds of growers.

Commissioners also approved a $1.24 million annual budget that reflects the diminished 2004 harvest. While the U.S. Department of Agriculture won’t release final figures until the end of January, tentative industry estimates put the 2004 harvest in the mid-40-million-pound range.

The fewer berries resulted in a reduction of tax collected, at 1 cent per pound, for 2004, leaving the commission with about $300,000 less to work with for marketing purposes than it had for 2003.

So when the commission representative from Jasper Wyman & Son pushed for approval of the wild blueberry co-promotion program, the three opposing members believed that his true interest was self-promotion and not the good of the industry.

“People here are voting to put money right into their own companies,” Merrill said. “I have some problems with that.”

He worried about the public perception of the commission’s action.

Under the program’s guidelines that were completed Wednesday, the state’s shippers and processors will receive financial incentives – reimbursement for marketing expenses – as they go about their marketing business in 2005.

All growers and processors who paid the mandatory taxes on blueberries this year are eligible to receive up to 50 percent of their marketing dollars, not to exceed their tax contributions.

That is, everyone in the industry can be eligible, down to the smallest grower. Most small growers would be unlikely to benefit from the program because they sell their berries only to the processors and marketing directly to consumers.

Those opposed to the program pointed out that smaller growers can’t take advantage of the program the way the industry’s two largest processors, Wyman’s of Milbridge and Cherryfield Foods of Cherryfield, can.

Kim Higgins of Wyman’s countered that the commission members had already approved the program in concept when they adjusted the 2004 budget in May, voting 5-3 to set aside $200,000 for co-promotion.

Not expended this year because members were unclear on the program’s propriety, the $200,000 was shifted to the 2005 budget. Commissioners doubly approved it, Higgins pointed out, when they approved the 2005 budget moments before turning to the discussion on co-promotion.

David Bell, the commission’s executive director, presented a Dec. 1 letter to the commission from the Maine Attorney General’s office. In that letter, Mark Randlett, an assistant AG, stated that ” … the Wild Blueberry Commission of Maine does not possess the legal authority to adopt rules.”

He further clarified that the commission “may be able to implement the program through polices or procedures that do not involve the State’s rulemaking process,” yet expressed “no opinion in this regard.”

Growers Kelley and David Kilton of Machias voted for the co-promotion, along with Sid Reynolds of Cherryfield Foods and Higgins. The eighth commission member, grower Gordon Scott of Waldoboro, was absent.

Processor William Guptill of Wesley voted against the program.

“I think it’s a very bad decision to go ahead with it,” he said. “There are more avenues to spend our money than this way.”

In other business of the board, Roy Allen and Del Emerson were re-elected as chairman and vice-chairman of the commission respectively.