Development of wild blueberry agriculture

Native people enjoyed wild blueberries long before Europeans discovered North America. According to one early report, French explorer Samuel de Champlain found natives gathering wild blueberries for use in the winter months. They also used wild blueberries to make soup seasoning by drying the wild blueberries in the sun and then pounding them into a powder that was added to the dried meal. Some sources also believe that this fruit has healing powers.

Natives originally harvested wild blueberries where they found them in nature, i.e. where there were no trees or where forest areas were burned by a lightning strike. Later, they started deliberately burning certain parts where they liked to harvest the most, which resulted in the growth and increased yield of this fruit.

Wild blueberries were primarily used by early settlers for personal use. Crop management at the time was very primitive and worked by mainly maintaining existing sites or creating new areas by fire pruning and bush cutting.

The wild blueberry industry as we know it today began in the blueberry barrens of Washington County, Maine. There are several thousand hectares of these sandy and gravelly areas that are suitable for growing blueberries. It appears that the natives were burning these areas long before settlers became interested in these fields around 1800. In the following period, the barrens were treated as public lands and were open for general harvesting. Pickers consumed most of the fruit but soon found a ready market in the communities.

In 1866, a cannery in Milbridge, Maine began selling blueberries to the Union Army. This was the very beginning of the processing industry and the successful movement of beginning to expand to a larger market. High demand for wild blueberries has led to the expansion of harvesting throughout coastal Maine and beyond.

Systematic land management for blueberries began with owners leasing some of their land to operators in the Maine barrens. Each year the tenant burned a portion of the land by using a piece of bent pipe closed at one end, filled with kerosene, and at the other end having a cloth plug to act as a wick. In the year when the land was burned, there was no harvest, but the harvest began the second year. The first ripe berries were picked by hand, and the rest were picked at the same moment when most of them were ripe and then transferred to the cannery. Hand-held blueberry rakes were used to harvest later berries.

Wild blueberry management practices changed gradually throughout most of the 20th century, and one of the early changes was the introduction of pest control measures. This was due to the discovery of maggots in Maine's canned blueberries in 1922. State inspectors were placed in canneries and by the following year the fruit was graded under the Maine Pure Food and Drug Act. The US Department of Agriculture staff undertook studies on the blueberry fruit fly, Rhagoletis mendax Curran, and recommended control procedures which included uniform burning of the fields, destruction of waste in the fields and at the factory, and dusting of fields with an insecticide.

The 1944 Maine blueberry crisis was most likely caused by a combination of a bug infestation and heightened market competitiveness. For many years, the domestic fruit industry's competition impacted the production of blueberries. For example, highbush blueberries were first planted in New Jersey and Michigan in the 1920s (Dow 1950), and both states had reached a mature stage of blueberry production by then. Growers and canners viewed highbush blueberry yields in other states as a significant rival by the 1940s (Day 1959). The Maine industry even attributed the low pricing from 1942 to 1944 on competition from outside the state (Day 1954). In addition to fresh competition, 1942 and 1943 saw isolated crop losses due to unfavorable weather. Subsequently, an armyworm (Mythimna unipuncta Haworth) infestation caused the blueberry output in 1944 to drop from 17 million bushels the year before to 3.5 million (Yarborough 2014). In this case study, we primarily examine the development of political support for three initiatives: a self-imposed levy to finance agricultural science on the property, a new experimental farm, and a committee to represent the industry's interests as a whole.

A portion of packers—processors were now referred to as "packers"—got in touch with University of Maine Dean of Agriculture Arthur Deering. He then took the lead in trying to convince the rest of the industry to cooperate. "That was no easy task," agricultural editor Clarence Day said (Day 1959). To resolve the problem, Deering called a conference in Ellsworth on December 5, 1944. Growers did not view one another as rivals, but there was division among processors. The late 1920s saw the formation of many cooperatives, which "created intense feelings and competition" with the packing corporations. Deering invited the heads of every cooperative and firm. In addition, although though the meeting was open to the public, Deering did not publicize it and only invited a small number of people—roughly 40—in order to improve the likelihood of a consensus (Day 1954). It is evident that there was fierce internal competition in the sector between businesses and cooperatives, and that this needed to be addressed by carefully balancing representation.

A blower-type oil burner was invented in the 1950s, and most bigger and more forward-thinking farmers quickly adopted it. Burning may be done in a greater variety of weather thanks to this technology. Although it was attempted, propane gas was never a popular fuel. Pruning wild blueberries using a rotary mower was tested for numerous years, but producers did not commonly embrace it until the 1980s. Using string to create ten-foot-wide lanes in the fields during harvest season was another early invention. By assisting in the management of the pickers and guaranteeing full berry picking, this improved efficiency.

An analysis of the Maine data that is now accessible makes evident how modern technologies and management techniques have affected the production of wild blueberries. Less than a hundred pounds per acre were most likely produced by the first harvesting on the barrens of Maine. The Maine Extension Service reported average yields per acre of over four hundred pounds in 1922 and over six hundred pounds in 1955. According to Metzer and Ismail (1976), the average yield in the state was more than a thousand pounds per acre in 1976, while some fields yielded more than a ton. Sales of wild blueberries increased along with output during the 20th century, giving producers and processors a healthy profit margin.

Leaders in the business from Maine and Canada founded the Wild Blueberry Association of North America in 1981. In order to raise awareness of wild blueberries and promote a high-quality product, this group brought together farmers and processors from various producing areas. Their actions were so successful that they were immediately recognized as an example of coordinated worldwide agricultural product marketing.

The resilient Passamaquoddy Tribe is one of the 480 wild blueberry farms that now exist, ranging in size from 20 acres to thousands of acres. Our present challenges include identifying wild blueberries, supporting family farms and processing plants, and inspiring new farmers to use this crucial product for both culture and economy into profitable farming ventures.