Why is this crop forbidden fruit?
WHATELY -- On a muggy summer afternoon in the Pioneer Valley, Tim Nourse turns his truck down a field road that runs along the border between Franklin and Hampshire counties. Outside the driver's window, most of the acreage sprawls northward, along the fertile right bank of the Connecticut River. That's where the grower has planted much of the strawberry and raspberry crops for which Nourse Farms is best known. But today, that's not what interests him. Nourse is pointing out the window to Hampshire County, to rows of rugged red currant bushes planted in the fine sandy loam that distinguishes this area's land.
The bulbous currants hang off the bushes in clusters, like bright red salmon roe on stems. Super-tart, vitamin-loaded berries long cherished in Europe for their use in sauces, jams, and wines, currants have experienced a recent boom among growers in the United States. But they're forbidden fruit in many areas of Massachusetts because of their long-standing association with a tree-killing infection called white pine blister rust. Whately, in fact, is on the restricted list, but not Hatfield. That explains why Nourse must plant his currants down the road, just yards inside Hatfield's town limits.
''It makes no sense to me that I have to keep these currants on the Hatfield side of the field, but we've been hammering at this for more than five years and it just doesn't seem to go anywhere," Nourse says of his grass-roots campaign to get the state to revise the restrictions.
History hasn't helped his case.
Currants' bad reputation stretches back to the early 20th century, when the fruits were fingered as an alternate host for white pine blister rust. In an effort to stop the spread of the disease, the government banned currants nationwide and tried to wipe out the robust native species with the Ribes Eradication Program. (Currants belong to the ribes genus.) The feds lifted the ban in 1966, leaving the restrictions on ribes a matter for each state to consider. Since then, as more research has been done about the relationship between currants and blister rust (and as breeders have developed varieties resistant to the disease), most states have relaxed or expunged laws restricting production of the fruits.
Massachusetts, though, has continued to prohibit black currants, which historically have been most susceptible to blister rust. The state does allow cultivation of red currants, white currants, and gooseberries (also from the ribes genus), but only in certain areas.
According to one report written in 2003 by Tim Smith, the president of the Massachusetts Fruit Grower's Association, and Sonia Schloemann, a small-fruit specialist at the University of Massachusetts, one glaring problem with the regulations is that the list of ribes-restricted towns was drawn up 80 years ago and has little bearing on the present landscape. ''The rationale supporting the list is no longer clear to regulators," they wrote.
That's about right, says Brad Mitchell, the director of regulatory and consumer services at the Massachusetts Department of Agricultural Resources. ''We recognize that the regulations don't make much sense," says Mitchell, citing budget and staffing shortages as the main reasons the regulations have not yet been revised. ''If we have a list of towns and we don't know why they're on the list, then we need to make some changes." Mitchell has drafted revisions to the regulations and hopes to hold public hearings on the matter by the end of the year.
The big change would come for commercial growers, who would have to get a permit and submit to annual state inspections.
For Nourse, that would mean that the Massachusetts growers he does business with could get in on the currant boom already underway in places like Connecticut and New York. New York wiped its ribes regulations off the books in 2003. Steven McKay, a small-fruit expert with Cornell University's agricultural extension program, was instrumental in that effort. He said that last summer in New York ''we didn't have enough black currants to meet demand."
McKay has advised Greg Quinn, the founder of Au Currant, a company that's invested huge acreage in black currant plantings. This year, the company released its first product, a black currant juice called CurrantC. According to the report by Smith and Schloemann, black currants equal or surpass all other fruits in terms of vitamin C, potassium, calcium, iron, and protein.
Even a modest acreage of currants could help Massachusetts farmers diversify, says Nourse, pointing to the hard times that many of the state's cranberry growers have had in recent years. ''Currants are a perfect fit for those guys. Many of them already have juicing equipment, and currants are a different season," he says. ''Currants are what I call a hardware crop. They'll grow on a wide variety of soils, the plants are very hardy, and the fruit itself is very durable and versatile. On top of all that, currants are just another buffer, and our farmers can always use that."
