WASHINGTON STATE

Washington State House Democrats

HOUSE DEMOCRATS

Cranberry harvest is in full swing

 Behold, the cranberry.

A cranberry dish is a big part of Thanksgiving spreads across the nation, and cranberry juice has come into its own in recent decades. The yearly Cranberry Harvest Festival just finished delighting residents and weekend visitors in the Grays Harbor County community of Grayland. Washington’s all-machine cranberry harvest started a few weeks back and it’ll go full-swing into mid-November. This year’s growing season has been very good. The industry is looking at a particularly top-notch harvest for Washington’s 130 growers on our Pacific Coast and in Whatcom County.

Several hundred employees work year-round in the cranberry industry, with more folks coming on for harvest. First planted in the Evergreen State more than 130 years back, cranberries aren’t nearly as remunerative an agribusiness here as, say, apples, wheat and hops. However, Kim Patten, a professor at Washington State University’s Long Beach Research and Extension unit, says cranberries fill upward of 160,000 barrels in a good season. Patten, a WSU-Long Beach professor for 24 years, pointed out that fresh and processed cranberries comprise the two domestic and worldwide markets.

About 90 percent of the growers in Washington are affiliated with Ocean Spray. Maybe three of the remaining independents grow their cranberries organically. Patten said the tools and machinery of the cranberry industry really haven’t changed much in the last 50 years. According to the American Cranberry Growers Association:

  • Cranberries, contrary to what some ill-informed folks might believe, aren’t grown in water. The fruit grows on low-lying vines in sandy bogs only flooded for wet-harvesting in the fall. After harvest, the bogs are re-flooded for the rest of the winter, which protects them from any damage brought on by the cold-weather months.
  • Cranberries contain small, air-filled chambers that cause the fruit to bounce and float in the water.
  • Cranberries join blueberries and Concord grapes as the three major fruits that are actually native to North America.
  • Cranberry vines are perennial, and some of the bogs go back well over a hundred years.

The aforementioned stellar 2014 harvest, unfortunately, isn’t necessarily a good thing for the industry. You can blame that on over-supply. International production being up, that means demand – and so, the cranberry compensation for farmers – is down.

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