Blueberry Growing Pains

With today's Fruit Grower Report, I'm Bob Larson. Washington growers shipped roughly 118 million pounds of blueberries this season, up from 103 million in 2015.

But, at last month's Small Fruit Conference in Lynden, Washington Blueberry Commission's executive director, Alan Schreiber says the industry appears to be suffering from some growing pains ...

ALAN SCHREIBER ... "One of the concerns that I have about looking forward is, we do not have the capacity to fresh-pack or process the crop that we produced this year. And if we can't handle it this year, what about next year and the next year. I estimate that 40% of our crop is packed or processed outside this state. Obviously, British Columbia and Oregon are the big destinations, but California and Idaho get some as well. So, we're leaving a tremendous amount of income on the table by shipping out of state."

Schreiber says it may well be time to do some catching up ...

ALAN SCHREIBER ... "If we could increase our post-harvest handling capacity, it would be worth millions and millions and millions to our industry. I'll give you two examples: Almost all of the frozen blueberries that come out of Eastern Washington, and there's millions and millions of pounds that get froze out of Eastern Washington, are actually shipped to Oregon to be frozen. Also, our industry could be strengthened if we had increased fresh-packed capacity in Northwest Washington, but where are you going to find the workers to pick and pack the fruit?"

Schreiber says Evergreen State growers have increased production to over 15,000 acres of blueberries in recent years, including 2,500 acres of organic.

About 70 % of Washington's berries are processed. The other 30 % are sold in the fresh market.