Maine’s 2005 blueberry crop disappointing

COLUMBIA – Maine’s wild blueberry crop in 2005 rebounded from its disastrous 2004 output, but still came up short against the industry’s midseason predictions and its five-year average.

The state’s growers produced 58.5 million pounds last year, according to the year-end report from the National Agricultural Statistics Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Released earlier this week from the USDA’s New England field office in Concord, N.H., the figures show the crop on an upswing – 27 percent higher than the 2004 crop, which was the worst in 10 years at 46 million pounds.

But even in mid-July, growers were hopeful of a crop on the order of 70 million pounds. That figure is derived from the service’s annual midseason survey of hundreds of growers who respond with their estimates and comments on the growing season so far.

“A lot of the growers actually compare the crops every two years,” said John Miyares, the statistician who compiles and compares the industry’s numbers. “But even if you look at the 80.4 million pounds from the 2003 season, the crop was still 27 percent below 2003.”

Counting the 2005 numbers, the five-year average for the crop stands at 64.5 million pounds.

Jeff Brann, director of Blueberry Hill, the University of Maine’s experimental station for wild blueberries along U.S. Route 1, said the crop looked promising at this time a year ago – before the wet spring set in.

“It was looking like a bumper crop through the winter, and everybody was counting on the good start,” Brann said Thursday.

“But then came the rain in May and June, a double whammy with mummy berry and blossom blight.”

Just when growers were hoping for rain in July, dryness set in for most of July and August.

“You had a cool, wet spring that brought about the disease conditions and delayed the bloom by one or two weeks,” Miyares said. “Then there was the dry summer, just when we needed a good rainfall in August. That lack of rain in July really put a lot of stress on the harvest.”

As of July 1, growers were hoping to see a crop on the order of 70 million pounds. They ended up at 58.5 million pounds.

“I know there were fields that were just abandoned,” Miyares said. “Plus growers had trouble finding rakers.”

That’s partly because rakers who made their traditional trek to the barrens in 2004 found the work slow and sparse.

Washington County acreage produces about 70 percent of the state’s crop. Farms in Hancock, Knox and Waldo counties make up most of the rest.

The state’s harvest may be down, but the national and international market prices for processed blueberries appear to be up. The statistics service anticipates that the selling prices will be 60 cents a pound for processed berries – the best such price in about 10 years.

The fresh-market price is $1.50 a pound, also the highest in at least 10 years.

While the 2005 crop figures are final, the market prices are still preliminary, Miyares said. The crop has not been fully marketed yet, and not all the growers have been paid yet.

But the numbers look good for the processors – largely because the 2004 crop was so poor and blueberry stocks in cold storage were down from that.

The value of the 2005 processed berry crop is estimated at $34.9 million – well over the value of the 2004 processed crop, which brought in $20.6 million.