Southeast U.S., California berries — Blueberries

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Burlington County, N.J., in the 1920s is where the U.S. blueberry industry began, “and boy, the industry certainly has grown,” said Denny Doyle, chairman of the New Jersey Blueberry Industry Advisory Council and owner of D.G. Doyle Farms, New Lisbon, N.J.

In New Jersey, most blueberry growers have released their bees by this point, so those buzzers can pollinate the blossoms for the harvest expected to start by June 15.

The crop looks good so far, he said.

“We’re hoping for labor. We have the same COVID issues as everybody else. We’re really hoping for that Johnson (& Johnson vaccination) shot, and I hope that gets straightened out because it’s so much more convenient for our workers,” Doyle said April 19. “We were really banking on that Johnson & Johnson shot; we were lining up people to do it. But we’ll get it done one way or the other.”

The New Jersey blueberry crop needs workers for six to eight weeks, so the single vaccination would save time compared to the double shots required by Pfizer and Moderna, with the subsequent wait times between shots and afterward.

Demand was great in 2020, and Doyle said he’s hoping for the same in 2021.

Import competition is getting tougher every year, with Mexico, Peru, Chile and Vancouver putting pressuring on domestic blueberries, he said.

American Blueberry Growers Alliance was founded in late 2020 as a result of these challenges, said Brittany Lee, vice president and farm manager of Waldo, Fla.-based Florida Blue Farms. Lee is also executive director of the Florida Blueberry Growers Association.

She’s on the U.S. Highbush Blueberry Council and other organizations as well.

The alliance among six blueberry-producing states is to advocate for domestic industry, educating legislators on the unique characteristics of the industry. Florida, which comprises about 15% of the U.S. blueberry production at most, and sometimes half that, would never meet the International Trade Commission’s import injury threshold, even if the damage was 100%, she said.

“It’s frustrating to me that policies are written in a way that some seasonal commodities don’t have as much protection as those that are grown year-round,” Lee said. “But I am not going to stop advocating for our blueberry growers.”

Mount Dora, Fla.-based H&A Farms packs for 42 blueberry farms in Florida and Georgia, and it also owns its own farms and manages other farms for a total of about 350 acres of blueberries.

“This year specifically, we’ve seen retailers demanding domestically grown fruit and willing to pay a little more for it. I’m feeling a little hopeful about it. We’ve been hit in Florida,” said Ryan Atwood, owning partner with Michael Hill.

“Retailers can have both, but they have to at least have something Georgia- and Florida-grown when in season. At the consumer level, they need to keep asking and demanding for it.”

U.S. Highbush Blueberry Growers Association — Photo courtesy U.S. Highbush Blueberry Council

H&A doesn’t pack anything without a purchase order, focusing on maximizing grower returns and promoting competition by using multiple marketers, he said.

“We have to be really good with projected volumes as a grower. We spend a lot of time in the field doing estimations,” Atwood said. “The better you estimate, the better decision the marketers can make.”

Central Florida’s harvest is coming off its peak and will likely wrap up by mid-May. North Florida is a week to 10 days behind that, followed by Georgia going into July.

The whole state of Florida is running late this year due to cooler weather the first few months of 2021.

“It just slows the crop a little bit, spreads it out, which is not necessarily a bad thing,” Atwood said.

And statewide, there may be lower volume due to pollination and pest issues, Atwood said.

Blueberry production in the entire Southeast U.S. is delayed seven to 10 days compared to last season, said Ryan Lockman, vice president of sales and procurement at Traverse City, Mich.-based North Bay Produce, a grower-owned cooperative.

“The weather has been rough in the Southeastern U.S. thus far, the main blueberry growing region for this time period,” Lockman said. “Between later than normal cold temps, strong storms and heavy rain, weather has been a challenge.”

While the entire supply chain is more complicated and costly than it was a year ago, including transportation and labor, the crop looks good.

“After a great crop in Florida, Georgia looks to have a similar crop to last year and North Carolina, as of right now, has the best crop they have had in four to five years,” he said. “Customer and consumer demand has been very good over the past couple months and shows no signs of slowing down.”