Despite an expected strong showing from late-season elliot blueberries, the Michigan blueberry crop will be down significantly this year, and cold winter weather that caused June drop damaged bushes, affecting future production.
Late-season Michigan fruit fared much better than early-season fruit, said Tim Spiech, chief operations officer for Paw Paw, Mich.-based Spiech Farms.
But the overall effects of the cold winter and subsequent June drop on the 2014-15 crop will be heavy when final damages are measured, Spiech said — and the effects will continue to be felt next season and beyond.
In late July Spiech Farms was finishing the third picking of its blue variety crop in southern Michigan and the second picking of its northern blue crop.
Late-season elliots, which should start harvesting the week of Aug. 3, survived the winter much better than earlier varieties, Spiech said.
“We’ll have more in the later deal than we had early, which is completely backwards. The elliots pulled through pretty well.”
Spiech estimates that about 90% of the company’s elliots, which will likely be harvested through the first week of September, should be harvested.
Salinas, Calif.-based Naturipe Farms LLC will finish earlier with mid-season varieties, but when the season is over, it should wind up looking similar to 2014, said Mario Flores, director of blueberry product management.
“Michigan this year is trending similar to last year, and not much different than a typical year for the season, due to the increased acres of late-season varieties and more acreage in the northern part of the state blueberry production area.”
About 46 million pounds of fresh-market Michigan fruit will likely be produced this season, Flores said. About 47 million pounds shipped in both 2014 and 2013.
Chris Hodgman of Hodgman Blueberry Plantation expected his company to harvest very high-quality fruit into mid-September, though volumes would start to taper off in the last week of July or early August.
“We’re at our peak now,” Hodgman said July 24. “The quality is excellent, the best in years.”
The short blue variety crop could lead to a market gap in August, said Eric Crawford, president and CEO of Sunrise, Fla.-based Fresh Results LLC.
“It appears that the fresh blueberry crop in Michigan is going to finish much earlier this year than normal, and total volumes will be well below previous estimates. We are predicting a virtual gap in production during the first week of August through the 10th as we transition from bluecrop to elliot varieties.”
As for the early-season crops, it was hard as of late July to put an overall estimate on losses, since some farms were hit much harder than others, Spiech said. “Some farms were down 20%, some 90%. It was farm to farm, cold pocket to cold pocket.”
Bushes less than one year of age and bushes older than five or six years were hit particularly hard, which will have a lingering effect on production.
“The next two or three seasons will be down.”
Source - http://www.thepacker.com/
