Blueberry Purchase

Blueberry Purchase. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Fruit Grower Report.

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack recently announced USDA's intention to purchase up to $14.7 million worth of cultivated blueberry products. Alan Schreiber, Executive Director of the Washington Blueberry Commission.

SCHREIBER: There’s a lot of blueberries on the market and they were hoping that the government could purchase some blueberries to kind of sop up some surplus blueberries. People will be very happy and very enthusiastic to get blueberries.

Schreiber says he thinks this will be processed blueberries as opposed to fresh but that’s great too since both markets are a bit soft at the moment.

SCHREIBER: Historically Washington has been largely a processed blueberry state, we do have significant fresh production but the majority of our production is processed. We have an over supply like we’ve never had before and this will take off some of the excess supply out there.

This USDA purchase comes at a good time.

SCHREIBER: People right now when the prices are low will try and divert some to processed and that also depresses the fresh market but this will incrementally help the processed market and if the processed market strengthens that will end up helping the fresh market. And so this will have a small but tangible impact on our state because we produce so much processed blueberries.

More tomorrow on the blueberry harvest.

That’s today’s Fruit Grower Report. I’m Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.