cover story
JUDIE STEEVES
Walk-behind harvester at Cloudburst Cranberries is one variation of devices that have replaced labour-intensive manual methods of gathering ripe berries.
A growing concern
Despite a world surplus of cranberries, and the pressures of urban development, there’s plenty of optimismabout the industry’s future in this province.
By Judie Steeves P
ickers no longer crawl around the field on their knees and use hand scoops to gather cranberries. In fact, farmers have come up with some very complex innovations to mechanize the harvest of those little red orbs, so popular in lunchboxes once they are sweetened and dried, or crushed and poured into a glass and blended with other fruit juices.
Hank Bitter, of Cloudburst Cranberries in Pitt Meadows, believes cranberries are one of the most promising farm products around. He has been a member of the Ocean Spray co-operative since he began growing them in 1993. His family uses a walk-behind harvester to beat the vines and release the ripe berries, which, because they are hollow, then float to the surface of the flooded field. However, Darshan and Daljit Banns, of Highland Redi-Green Turf in Pitt Meadows, invented the sulky for beating berries. It has a seat for the operator to ride on and
uses bike wheels instead of the fatter vehicle wheels used on the Bitter family harvesters and those used by the Hopcott family of Pitt Meadows.
There are all sorts of variations on beaters being used for harvesting cranberries on fields throughout the Lower Mainland and on Vancouver Island, and there is a variety of innovative pieces of equipment used to suck the berries out of the flooded fields and separate out debris as well. A more thorough sorting is done at cleaning plants operated by Ocean Spray in Richmond and Langley, before the berries are shipped to Markham, Washington for processing. It is the wet-harvested berries that are destined for processing for juice, Craisins or sauce. The much smaller quantity of fresh ones are dry-harvested earlier in the season. There are 6,300 acres planted in B.C., with 5,500 currently producing, and B.C.’s berries make up 12 percent of Ocean Spray’s total North American production, explains Brian Mauza, agricultural scientist for the co-op in this province. There are around 80 growers here, just under 10 percent of the 850 cranberry and grapefruit growers who are members of Ocean Spray.
B.C. growers ship about 80 million pounds a year—mostly the Stevens variety—and that volume is increasing. The grower-owned co-op produced $1.9 billion worth of products last year, in total.
There are also a few independent growers in B.C. on about 300 acres, who rely on the commodity market to sell their fruit.
From 1999 to 2001 cranberries bottomed out, but during the last few years they have rebounded, particularly with the
British Columbia Berry Grower • Winter 2010-11 5
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