For over a century, wild blueberries have been central to Maine’s modern agricultural identity, representing one of the oldest continuously managed crops in North America. Maine holds a unique status as the only state in the U.S. where these lowbush berries are grown and harvested commercially.
Unlike highbush varieties that are planted in neat, uniform rows across the country, Maine’s wild blueberries grow naturally in massive, genetically diverse mats across rugged glacial barrens. These resilient plants have been on this land at least 10,000 years, cared for by generations of Indigenous communities long before the arrival of modern commercial farming. Today’s growers inherit a deep, sacred history of land stewardship, but escalating climate data is forcing them to balance the heavy responsibility of preserving that ancient heritage with the financial realities of running a modern business.
The financial friction of this shifting environment became clear during a punishing 2025 season, which left the industry with an estimated $30 million loss. According to Eric Venturini, executive director of the Wild Blueberry Commission of Maine, the final data for 2025 showed that the state harvested just 54.6 million pounds of fruit. This total marked a steep drop, down about a third from the state’s 10-year average.
Venturini explains that because wild blueberries grow on a strict two-year cycle, producers generally gauge success by a fully healthy, uninterrupted time frame. When everything goes right for two years, Maine can easily produce over 100 million pounds of fruit. By that ideal baseline, the 2025 climate crisis effectively wiped out nearly half of the expected statewide crop.
The collapse came after a combination of spring freezing and summer drought, a phenomenon scientists call climate whiplash.
At Crystal Spring Farm in Brunswick, Maine, grower Seth Kroeck experienced this erratic weather system firsthand when his 2025 harvest yielded only 7% of what he originally anticipated. The trouble began long before the summer heat set in. Kroeck says the farm faced an exceptionally cold and wet April and May, which severely restricted the native bumblebees and wild pollinators from getting to work. Because pollination failed early on, the berries that did manage to grow never developed to a good size due to the lack of later rainfall.
The physical process of harvesting a failed crop only added to the frustration. Kroeck says that mechanical harvesting requires converting a standard farm tractor into a specialized harvester, a setup and breakdown process that takes four days of labor. His crew raked the fields for three days, but they only yielded around 2,800 pounds of fruit. This was a devastating fraction of the 40,000 pounds the farm typically expects when it gears up to harvest.
“It was a really heartbreaking time to go out of the fields and not be able to find the crop that you expected, and for us it was a kind of a gut punch,” Kroeck says.
The financial shockwave of 2025 has forced a difficult conversation about the industry’s long-term viability and its lack of capital. According to state legislative testimony by the Wild Blueberry Commission of Maine, the state’s actively managed wild blueberry acreage has steadily declined from a previous high of 60,000 acres down to roughly 40,000 acres today.
To combat these losses, agricultural groups lobbied the Maine legislature for an agricultural bond to fund critical farming infrastructure. Venturini reports that a historically large coalition of agricultural organizations walked the halls of the legislature to fight for the bond, but the effort ultimately fell six votes short in the House. While that political defeat was disappointing, Venturini emphasizes that capital remains a critical issue, and the commission is actively looking for alternative solutions for the next legislative session.
Without significant capital, independent farmers are finding it nearly impossible to fund the heavy infrastructure required to survive modern droughts. Kroeck’s farm has utilized some federal funding for mulching fields to retain soil moisture, but installing permanent irrigation across his acreage is out of reach.
“It’s not financially viable if you’re just looking for business to pay for it,” Kroeck says. “There’s no way we personally, with the losses that we’ve had year over year, can pay that out of the farm’s funds.”
For diversified operations like Crystal Spring Farm, other crops have had to step in to keep the business afloat. Kroeck also grows organic vegetables like carrots and Brussels sprouts, alongside small grains like wheat and oats. While the 2025 drought did cause some yield loss on his carrots and sprouts, those alternative crops ultimately helped the farm make it through the year. Kroeck credits this diversification as the key to his year-to-year survival, because it keeps his cash flow moving when the blueberries fail.
The underlying problem for the wider market is the sheer unpredictability of the regional weather, which creates massive swings in the food supply chain. Venturini points out that Maine might grow 105 million pounds of blueberries in a good year, drop down to 45 million pounds the next year, and then bounce back to 90 million pounds after that. Over the last decade, the crop has fluctuated roughly 27% around its annual average.
Venturini argues that this instability makes it incredibly difficult for sellers to build high-value markets for the fruit. He sees a glimmer of hope in a new Senate version of the federal farm bill, which includes language allowing USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service to help build drought resiliency for farms that do not currently have established water sources.
Despite the looming climate threats and the financial hurdles, the cultural significance of the wild blueberry keeps local farmers anchored to the land. The native berry represents something that cannot be replicated anywhere else in the global agricultural market. Kroeck thinks the industry needs to do a better job of sharing this narrative with consumers who might only be familiar with standard store-bought varieties.
“I think one of the things that ... has not gotten through to the public, especially the public outside of Maine, is just the uniqueness [of this] crop,” Kroeck says. “Especially when you’re talking about comparing it to a larger highbush blueberry, it really is a different animal ... Part of telling that story, in addition to the health [benefits], is also this backstory of its history and its value to Maine. In a country where you can go to Applebee’s anywhere and fill up your gas tank at a Costco anywhere, [it is] important to really recognize the regionalisms that make us all unique. You can’t get that when you go to Arizona, and you can’t get that when you go to Washington state.”
This deep sense of regional pride and historical responsibility continues to motivate Maine’s agricultural community as they prepare for future harvests. For growers like Kroeck, honoring the millennia of history and the generations of farmers and Indigenous communities who came before means ensuring the land stays productive.
The goal is to find a way to balance the preservation of this ancient native species with the economic demands of modern commercial farming. While the heritage of the barrens is worth protecting, the fields must remain functional, working landscapes rather than relics of a bygone era, he says.
“And while I don’t think we’re being one of the commercial growers of a museum piece, I think there’s an added motivation there to figure out how we can make this product successful as our weather patterns and climate change,” Kroeck says.
