U.S. Cranberries Are Embraced By Europeans
By Tom Moroney and Brian K. Sullivan
Bloomberg News
Thursday, November 23, 2006
The cranberry, a Thanksgiving icon in the New World, is bouncing back from a market slump thanks to the Old World.
Four centuries after the bitter berry was embraced by hungry immigrants who left Europe seeking a better life, the cranberry is getting a boost from new markets in Germany, France and yes, Britain, where those first expatriates set sail.
"It's been phenomenal," said David Farrimond, general manager of the Cranberry Marketing Committee, a quasi-public agency in Wareham, Mass., under the U.S. Agriculture Department. "You go into a little neighborhood store in Germany now and they have cranberries. In some places they have our Thanksgiving, too."
U.S. cranberry exports, helped by studies showing health benefits, have jumped 70 percent in the past six years. Ninety percent of the product shipped overseas is in the form of juice concentrate, less than 2 percent is raw berries and the rest is canned sauces or dried, sweetened berries sold as a snack food or baking ingredient, according to the Agriculture Department.
Today, 26 percent of the U.S. cranberry crop ends up abroad in one form or another, including the equivalent of more than 8 million pounds bound for Germany.
"It's kind of a boomerang effect," said James McWilliams, author of "A Revolution in Eating: How the Quest for Food Shaped America."
In the push to expand sales through overseas markets, one of the first stops was France, where the cranberry was pitched not as a side to turkey and stuffing but as a health food.
The cranberry, Vaccinium macrocarpon, is packed with the tannins that help prevent urinary tract infection, Farrimond said. Research in 1998 at Rutgers University in New Jersey found that the tannins prevented the bacteria most commonly linked to infections from attaching to cells in the urinary tract, according to the Cape Cod Cranberry Growers' Association in Wareham.
"The French were so enthusiastic," Farrimond said. After one trade show, he said, locals were taking the leftover cranberries and passing them out to friends.
What the new export markets mean for the cranberry industry in Massachusetts, home to more than four in 10 U.S. growers, is nothing short of survival. Grown from evergreen shrubs indigenous to cooler parts of the Northern Hemisphere, the cranberry was first cultivated commercially in the Cape Cod town of Dennis, Mass., about 1816.
The outlook for growers was bleak as recently as 1999, when prices per 100-pound barrel plummeted from $70 to $16 largely on overproduction in Canada and Wisconsin, the top U.S. producer.
"I would have expected real dire consequences," said Jeff LaFleur, spokesman for the Cape Cod Cranberry Growers' Association.
One fear, LaFleur said, was that the small growers would be forced to sell off their acreage to homebuilders in the popular vacation area of Cape Cod.
"It was fairly dicey," recalled Jim Jenkins, a fourth-generation cranberry grower in West Barnstable, Mass.
Jenkins, 63, runs his 78-acre operation with his son Fred, 38, and his grandson Joel, 20. He said he never seriously considered selling out.
Yet the Jenkins family never fully recovered from the market downturn until last year, when they felt comfortable enough to put money back into the business. They replaced a 25-year-old backhoe.
Today, there are 14,200 acres of cranberry farms in Massachusetts, and the price per barrel has climbed to between $35 and $40. It is the state's most valuable crop.
Export markets are crucial now because domestic consumption of cranberries has been slumping in recent years. Per capita consumption of cranberry juice has fallen to 1.75 pounds per capita today from two pounds in 2002, according to Agriculture Department figures.
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