Nancy McBrady, the executive director of the Wild Blueberry Association of North America, stood in the kitchen at Fork Food Lab in Portland watching chefs from national restaurant chains (such as Applebee’s) and food service corporate kitchens (such as Sysco) compete to make the best dish from a box full of Maine ingredients. The star was wild blueberries, both fresh and frozen, and all around the commercial kitchen, 10 chefs were pureeing, sauteeing and garnishing with Maine’s tiny native berry.
Meanwhile, McBrady was speaking frankly about trouble in the wild blueberry business.
“The industry is actually facing a lot of difficulty right now,” McBrady said, listing off a series of factors, particularly a glut of frozen berries, that have led to such depressed prices that farmers are taking huge losses. Some berries may be left on the vines as a result; the Passamaquoddy Wild Blueberry Company, which has 1,000 acres of wild blueberries on tribal land and typically harvests about 7 million pounds, announced it will skip this year’s harvest. The stark reality is that some of these farmers might spend more harvesting than they would make on the crop, and that’s assuming they could even find a buyer.
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