April 2007: Around the State
Demand has spurred bigger blueberry crops in Oregon and
prices are at all-time highs.
|
AGRICULTURE
The big blue boost
SALEM — One of the shining stars in Oregon agriculture
these days is the regal blueberry.
While crops such as strawberries, green beans and hops, once
Willamette Valley mainstays, have slipped from prominence,
blueberry popularity just keeps on climbing.
“The blueberry industry is one of the absolute success
stories in Oregon agriculture,” says Bryan Ostlund,
administrator of the Oregon Blueberry Commission in Salem.
The crop is also enjoying tremendous success nationwide,
Ostlund says. “Blueberry nurseries can’t produce
enough planting stock to keep up with grower demand and growers
can’t keep up with buyer demand.”
In Oregon alone, blueberry acreage has grown from around 3,700
acres in 2003 to over 5,000 acres today — an increase of
over 35% — and counting.
If it weren’t for poor pollination weather, winter
freezes and stifling temperatures that stunted growth in many
blueberry fields last summer, Oregon growers could easily have
set an all-time harvest record of 40 million pounds, Ostlund
says. “And the demand would have been there.”
As it turns out, the industry did set a record despite the
poor conditions, with an estimated 35 million
pounds. The previous Oregon record was 34 million pounds, which
was set in 2004 and repeated in 2005.
Prices, too, are at all-time highs, with fresh market packers
competing with processors, Ostlund said.
“Growers have never seen it this good,” says Steve
Erickson, who handles grower support for Fall Creek Farm &
Nursery near Springfield, North America’s largest
blueberry nursery.
Celebrating its 30th birthday next year, Fall Creek, which
occupies around 100 acres, grows over 40 varieties of
blueberries for commercial growers and retailers. The young
plants are sold either in containers or as bareroot stock and
shipped all over the globe.
“We’ve got increasing crops in Oregon and
the last few years we’ve had an increase in prices, and
normally those two don’t go hand in hand,” says
Erickson, who was a grower and processor in the Salem area
before joining Fall Creek.
According to Erickson, blueberry acreage in Oregon has
been increasing 300 to 500 acres a year for the last several
years. “That’s more than double where it was just a
few years ago.” What’s behind the boom? In a word:
health.
Blueberries, which are touted as having super nutraceutical
properties, are enjoying two distinct and robust markets,
Ostlund says.
The first is well-to-do baby boomers facing health issues due
to aging and years of bad diets. The second market is made up
of parents and school district officials who are finally
getting around to addressing juvenile obesity.
Blueberries have also entered the uncharted waters of the
alcohol industry as a flavor agent. “Bacardi is in that
market. So is Jack Daniel’s,” Ostlund says.
A report in 1996 by the U.S. Department of Agriculture on the
health benefits of the fruit kicked off the Blueberry Boom.
Since then, the U.S. Highbush Blueberry Council, which will
spend a record $1.2 million in promotional activities in 2007,
has been beating the nutraceutical drum.
The council also spends around $500,000 a year for research
aimed at looking for even more healthful compounds in
blueberries.
In Oregon, blueberries are marketed in one of two ways: fresh
market and processed.
Processed berries usually end up in manufactured foods and
beverages, such as pastries and fruit drinks.
Erickson, a 20-year veteran of the industry, says that
increasing consumer demand for fresh blueberries has driven
fresh market berries.
“Historically, the U.S. industry has always sold more
processed than fresh, but the last four years we’ve
actually sold more fresh than processed. In Oregon we’re
still a little heavier to processing,” he
says.
Both a concern and a welcome trend for the U.S. blueberry
industry is the increasing production in South American
countries such as Chile and Argentina, which harvest their
berries at opposite times of the year from the U.S., Ostlund
says. “The foreign fresh market is actually a good thing
because it extends the season and keeps people eating
blueberries longer.”
On the other hand, offshore berries that are frozen and sold
into the United States when the crop here is coming into
production pose a direct threat in processing sectors.
The flip side to that is exports of Oregon blueberries to
Pacific Rim countries and to Europe, which are helping bolster
bullish blueberry markets in the U.S., Erickson says.
As for the future, “acres will continue to grow,”
Ostlund says. “The issue for the industry is: When do you
put the brakes on the whole thing?”
According to the Oregon field office of the USDA’s
National Agricultural Statistical Service, Oregon ranks third
in the country in blueberry production, with Michigan No. 1 and
New Jersey at No. 2.
“It’s a great industry to be involved with right
now,” says grower/packer Hugh Eisele, co-owner of Scenic
Fruit in Gresham. “The near future looks real good for
us.”
— John
Schmitz
Have an opinion? E-mail feedback@oregonbusiness.com
