European sales give cranberries a boost
The cranberry, a Thanksgiving holiday icon in the New World, is bouncing back from a market slump thanks to the Old World.
Four centuries after the bitter berry was embraced by hungry immigrants who left Europe seeking a better life, the cranberry is getting a boost from new markets in Germany, France. and yes, Great Britain, from where those first expatriates set sail.
"It's been phenomenal," said David Farrimond, general manager of the Cranberry Marketing Committee, a quasipublic agency in Wareham, Mass., under the US Agriculture Department. "You go into a little neighborhood store in Germany now, and they have cranberries. In some places they have our Thanksgiving, too."
US cranberry exports, helped by studies showing health benefits, have jumped 70 percent in the past six years. Ninety percent of the product shipped overseas is in the form of juice concentrate, less than 2 percent is raw berries, and the rest is canned sauces or dried, sweetened cranberries sold as a snack food or baking ingredient, according to the Agriculture Department.
Today, 26 percent of the US cranberry crop ends up abroad in one form or another, including the equivalent of more than 8 million pounds bound for Germany.
"It's kind of a boomerang effect," said James McWilliams, author of "A Revolution in Eating: How the Quest for Food Shaped America."
Besides the cranberry, McWilliams said Indian corn fits the boomerang pattern. In each case, it took time for Europeans to warm up to new foods. Indian corn was first fed to livestock before it migrated to the table.
In the push to expand sales through overseas markets, one of the first stops was France, where the cranberry was pitched not as a side to turkey and stuffing, but as a health food.
The cranberry, vaccinium macrocarpo, is packed with the tannins that help prevent urinary tract infection, said Farrimond of the Cranberry Marketing Committee. Research in 1998 at Rutgers University found that the tannins prevented the bacteria most commonly linked to infections from attaching to cells in the urinary tract, according to the Cape Cod Cranberry Growers' Association in Wareham.
"The French were so enthusiastic," said Farrimond. After one trade show, he said, locals were taking the leftover cranberries and passing them out to friends.
What the new export markets mean for the cranberry industry in Massachusetts, home of more than four in 10 US growers, is nothing short of survival.
Grown from evergreen shrubs indigenous to cooler parts of the Northern Hemisphere, the cranberry was first cultivated commercially in Dennis, Mass., around 1816.
Today, cranberry sauce is prominent alongside turkey on Thanksgiving tables across the United States
The outlook for growers was bleak as recently as 1999, when prices per 100-pound barrel plummeted to $16 from $70 largely on overproduction in Canada and Wisconsin, the top US producer.
"I would have expected real dire consequences," said Jeff LaFleur, spokesman for the Cape Cod Cranberry Growers' Association.
One fear, LaFleur said, was that the small growers would be forced to sell their acreage to homebuilders.
Today, there are 14,200 acres of cranberry farms in Massachusetts, and the price per barrel has climbed to $35 to $40. It is the state's most valuable crop.
Export markets are crucial now because domestic consumption of cranberries has been slumping in recent years.
Per capita consumption of cranberry juice has fallen to 1.75 pounds per capita today from 2 pounds in 2002, according to Agriculture Department figures.
