CHERRYFIELD, Maine — Although this year’s cranberry harvest was good, prices were unusually low, making for a “depressing” market, according to a cranberry specialist with the University of Maine Cooperative Extension.
“The price was … horrendous for water-harvested berries,” said Charles Armstrong, who works with the extension.
He said about 84 percent of all cranberries in Maine are wet harvested, which involves flooding the bog and collecting the ripe berries when they float to the surface.
Armstrong said the “break-even point” for wet harvesting requires getting about 35 to 40 cents per pound for the berries. This year, however, the price dipped to between 12 and 20 cents a pound.
In contrast, at $1.50 to $2.50 per pound, prices were good for dry harvested berries, which are picked by hand or raked mechanically.
But only about 16 percent of Maine’s crop is dry harvested because the market for fresh whole cranberries is relatively small compared to the market for processed cranberries, which are wet harvested for making juice and cranberry sauce.
“The majority of the fruit is further processed,” said David Bell, spokesman for Cherryfield Foods, which owns about 100 of the 200 total acres devoted to cranberry farming in Maine. About 85 percent of those 200 acres are located in Washington County.
Although Cherryfield Foods harvested all of its fields, some growers preferred to cut their losses and not harvest this year because of the low prices, Armstrong said.
“This was the first season I’d ever seen it that bad,” he said. “It ends up costing more to harvest.”
Armstrong said about five of the approximately 30 cranberry growers in Maine declined to harvest a total of about 25 acres.
The biggest costs in cranberry farming are associated with trucking and processing the fruit, he said. Fuel and manpower are other costs avoided by not harvesting.
Armstrong said many cranberry farmers do other things, such as lobster fishing, during the off season in order to make a living.
Maine is a small player in the cranberry market and has little impact on prices.
Armstrong said Maine’s cranberry production represents about half of 1 percent of cranberry production nationwide. In addition, Canada produces about 1,200 acres of cranberries each year, so Canada has about six times the acreage of Maine.
Bell said even though Cherryfield Foods does not sell to a wholesaler, it was still affected by the low prices in the wider market.
“We have farming costs even though we kind of sell it to ourselves,” he said.
Prices were much higher for organically grown and dry harvested cranberries than for their nonorganic counterparts. Organic dry harvested berries were going for as much as $5 a pound this year. Even though organic farmers have a lower yield, they make more money because of the higher prices for organic products, Armstrong said.
Overall, Armstrong estimates Maine’s cranberry farms produced about 2 million pounds of fruit this year, worth an estimated $808,000.
The 2013 crop set the record for harvested cranberries at 3,587,000 pounds, worth $1,449,000.
Last year, the harvest suffered from “terrible” weather, with July being chilly and rainy. Farmers harvested only a total of 1,542,800 pounds with a value of $437,000.
If not for low prices, this year would have been a good one for cranberry farmers.
“The quality of the fruit was very nice,” Bell said. “The problem is the price you get in the marketplace.”