Blueberry Bliss

Blueberry Bliss

Blueberry Bliss

I'm Lacy Gray with Washington Ag Today.

Blueberries have been receiving a lot of good press lately for their nutrition and health benefits. For this reason blueberries are gaining in popularity with producers here in the state, as well as consumers. Alan Schreiber, with the Washington Blueberry Commission says that this increased interest in blueberries has blueberry growers increasing their planting acreage to meet demand.

SCHREIBER: There's a tremendous amount of interest in blueberries. There's just a lot of demand for blueberries. I don't know of any commodity that's been studied as much and has as many positive results. I mean it's just pretty amazing all of the health benefits that have been documented as being associated with blueberries.

Schreiber says that most of Washington's blueberry crop is sold domestically each year. However, the industry was recently awarded two grants as part of the USDA Specialty Crop Block Grant funding program, which will go towards blueberry export development.

SCHREIBER: One of them deals with making sure that any pesticides we apply are at a level appropriate for our export markets. And we also have one looking at development of export markets in China, India, and South Korea.

Roughly 40% of the state's blueberries are grown in Eastern Washington, and 40% in Whatcom County. The other 20% is divided nearly equally between Skagit County and the rest of Western Washington.

That's Washington Ag Today.

I'm Lacy Gray on the Ag Information Network.

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