NB planning big foray into wild blueberries
FREDERICTON, New Brunswick — The New Brunswick government is opening up 4,000 acres of new public land for wild blueberry farming, even as the supply of the fruit has been bursting in both Maine and Canada.
The expansion “will contribute to making New Brunswick the largest producer of wild blueberries in the world,” said Rick Doucet, New Brunswick’s minister of agriculture, aquaculture and fisheries, in a media release.
A surge in wild blueberry production across North America recently left Maine wild blueberry growers, currently the largest producers in the world, with a 30 million pound surplus that the industry convinced the U.S. Department of Agriculture to purchase.
But New Brunswick’s government sees a growing global market for the antioxidant rich berries, Doucet said. “Wild blueberry production has enormous potential for fuelling economic growth in our province, particularly when you consider that the value of production at the farm gate has more than tripled over the last decade,” he said.
The New Brunswick government is leasing land in Gloucester and Northumberland counties, in the northeastern region of the province. Thirty-seven applications from farmers were accepted, with their leases ranging between about 24 and 57 acres, the government told CBC News.
After more than a decade of investments in new production, New Brunswick’s wild blueberry harvest accounts for 25 percent of Canada’s overall production of the fruit, about 80 percent of which is exported, including some to the U.S. But with bumper harvests in Maine, more production in Canada and also more supply of highbush blueberries, prices have fallen.
The weak Canadian dollar has offered Canadian farmers who export the crop something of a buffer amid the large supply, John Handrahan, president of the Prince Edward Island wild blueberry growers association, told CBC’s Island Morning.
Most of New Brunswick’s wild blueberry industry is comprised of small and medium sized farms, along with fresh and frozen processors, according to the provincial agriculture department. In its long-term planning, the New Brunswick government has called for focusing on value-added processing of wild blueberries for export, as well as promoting agri-tourism and local sales.
