popularity of Ocean Spray’s Craisins. “We’ve been building a new Craisin plant every year and there are still more coming online,” reported Mauza. Today there is a world surplus of cranberries so the commodity price is down to about 15 cents a pound. Mauza estimates it costs 25 to 30 cents a pound to produce the fruit.
But Ocean Spray growers get 61 cents a pound. Brand loyalty and the varied products produced by the
co-op have done well for growers who are members. Ocean Spray products are shipped all over the world, to 50 countries, including Europe, and in Jamaica, for instance, they even outsell Coca Cola, with specialty blended juices, noted Mauza.
Infrastructure costly But it is not all roses in cranberry production.
done with a third of the crop, said Mauza. Usually fields in B.C. are 15 to 17 acres in size, although they tend to be three to five acres in size in most other areas.
Crystal ball In future, there will likely be more mechanization because labour is costly and can be problematic, commented Mauza. New varieties coming in will likely increase yields. The average yield in B.C. was 160 100-pound barrels per acre last year. Farm gate income is about $12,000 an acre for co-op members. Water could be one of the next challenges for farmers, since cranberry growing is totally reliant on water at crucial periods in the season.
JUDIE STEEVES
Brian Mauza, agricultural scientist for the Ocean Spray cranberry co-op.
Getting a field into production is an expensive proposition. Mauza estimates it costs in the region of $30,000 an acre, not counting the cost of the land; then it’s three years to production of a crop, and three to four years to full production.
With a good variety, the field could be good for 20 to 40 years, though. Cranberries are a native North American plant that would normally be found in a peat bog, where they enjoy the acidic soil.
Today, however, many fields are planted in eight inches of sawdust due to a shortage of natural peat bogs. Ironically, cranberries don’t like wet feet. The intentional flooding of fields for harvest is done when the plants have pretty well shut down for winter, so little damage is done to the plants with the brief flooding.
For ease of harvesting the fields must be perfectly level, so there is the same depth of water throughout, and overhead irrigation must be built in for frost protection during bud development and flowering in spring, and for when the fruit is ripe in fall. Bees must be brought in for pollination during flowering, at about two to five hives per acre.
Fields are planted with cuttings which are dug in using a dull rototiller, and the resulting plant is a low-growing vine with upright portions where the berries
grow. The bud for the next year sets up in July, so growers are already growing the next year’s crop before the current year’s is harvested.
Weeds are one of the biggest problems, particularly during the start- up of a new field when there are lots of open areas where weed seeds can get established. They need to be hand- picked, which is very labour-intensive. It is very difficult to go organic growing cranberries because of the weeds, notes Mauza.
Wiping weeds with Round-up is a popular way to deal with them. Ocean Spray has a trace-back system so product can always be linked back to the field it was grown in, and the co-op keeps a retention sample from every field. Random sampling for residues is
But probably the biggest innovations in future will be in the end products—the value-added side of the industry, he speculates. Mauza said there are new products in development by Ocean Spray, but he wouldn’t elaborate. Already the flavoured bits of dried fruit in boxes of cereal are cranberries that have been flavoured with different juices.
The newest move is the addition of blueberry products, including juice and dried blueberries.
“We plan to do for blueberries what we did for cranberries,” commented Mauza.
Blueberries have the advantage that they can be eaten right out of hand, while cranberries have to be sweetened before they’re palatable, he noted. He doesn’t envision any reduction in the size of cranberry acreage in B.C. in the near future, despite the pressure on farmland from urban development. It’s a growing crop.
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6 British Columbia Berry Grower • Winter 2010-11
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