Cranberry Harvest Pt 2
With today’s Fruit Grower Report, I’m Bob Larson. Cranberry growers here in the Northwest are in harvest mode for this season, keeping their heads down and hoping the market is kinder to them than the past couple of years.
Professor Emeritus, Kim Patten, with the WSU Extension office in Long Beach, says there are no set asides this year, but it’s still early …
PATTEN … “We will see. Overall, there’s still, you know, on a global scale, way too many cranberries and the surplus isn’t particularly going to go away and there’s no new giant market for them and so it going to be, well, we’re going to hold on and hope things eventually clear out.”
So, in the meantime, Patten says harvest will go on as scheduled …
PATTEN … “But, for the most part, growers are continuing. There’s probably not as much renovation as there might have been in previous years. I mean, there’s still a little bit, but not that much, at least in Washington.”
Patten says the surplus is out of Northwest grower’s hands …
PATTEN … “And so, if there’s a lot of field rot or heat damage or winter damage, or whatever, and back east, Quebec and Wisconsin, then that will affect the overall surplus and so, as goes Quebec and Wisconsin, so goes the surplus. And, we don’t know where that is yet.”
Washington cranberry growers send about half of their berries to the process market for things like Craisons and juice, and the other half to the fresh market.
