CRANBERRIES
in their pockets

By Cindy Green

The tart ruby-red cranberry is as American as stars and stripes. Although it's unknown overseas, Americans are loving it in everything from juices to sugared snacks.

With demand outpacing supply, Minnesota growers are jumping on the cranberry bandwagon, although today only a few dozen acres are in production. It takes three to five years for a cranberry bog to produce marketable berries, so Minnesota will need decades to catch up with its neighbor to the east. Wisconsin leads the nation in cranberry production, outpacing Massachusetts, the other national leader, for the past two years.

Favorable cranberry growing conditions already exist in Minnesota's wild rice paddies. An ample water supply and diked ponds to hold water for fall harvesting are musts for cranberry production. That's why the Red Lake Band of Chippewa in northern Minnesota is converting 30 acres of wild rice paddies to cranberry bogs this year, says Lawrence Bedeau, the Band's natural resources director. When the Band converts at least 200 acres, they will consider on-site processing facilities to add value to the berries.

Increasing cranberry acreage is a slow, expensive process, but the wait is worth it, says Joel Rohde, Red Lake Band aquatic biologist. In today's market, a 100-pound barrel of cranberries easily commands $60. Last year, Wisconsin averaged 156 barrels per acre.

Those numbers enticed Greg Kennedy of Eden Prairie into the cranberry production business. President of a high-tech company that supplies small clean rooms for computer chip manufacturing, Kennedy investigated several agricultural ventures as an antidote to high-tech stress. In the end, it wasn't just profit potential that persuaded Kennedy -- the natural beauty of a Wisconsin cranberry farm struck him.

Kennedy recently purchased a wild rice farm near Aitkin "after six months' study making sure this is the proper site." His Minnesota Cranberry Company will gradually convert 50 acres of paddies a year to cranberry bogs, up to 400 acres. "By 2004, I'll hopefully be at a million dollars of production" with about 49 full- and part-time employees, predicts Kennedy, who was featured in a October 23 Wall Street Journal article on the booming cranberry industry. The article claimed growers are being paid up to $110/barrel because of supply shortages.

Crave the water
Tom Lochner, executive director of the Wisconsin State Cranberry Growers Association, warns aspiring producers to be cautious. "There's potential, but lots of people are overselling the price," he says. Lackluster crops in Massachusetts and increased demand are driving prices up and Wisconsin is experiencing positive industry growth, "but good crops within the next 10 years will change the supply situation. Old time growers have seen these cycles before -- prices come up, stabilize and go down the other side."

"It's not an easy crop to grow, as some people are finding out. You must have the right soils, a market and lots of water," Lochner stresses. "We've seen a number of operations go in that don't have an adequate water supply."

Kennedy agrees. "Just because you own a wild rice farm doesn't mean you can be a grower. You have to have water rights. It takes six to eight acre feet of water per acre of cranberries."

The low-growing cranberry vine needs irrigating throughout dry summers and misting during frost threats. During the October harvest, bogs are flooded and the cranberries knocked off the vines with equipment resembling a hay swather. A boom sweeps the cranberries into a berry pump, then into trailers for transportation. The marsh remains flooded over winter, as ice protects the vines.

The Red Lake Band can draw water from the nearby Clearwater River and Kennedy from the Mississippi, but both are designing closed water systems for holding and recycling water. "The DNR is very open to giving us water when there is high water," but during a drought they will limit pumping, says Kennedy who, like the Red Lake Band, has hired a Wisconsin engineer to design the bogs.

Costly ruby fruit
Besides bog construction costs, vines are expensive -- $5,000 to $8,000 per acre for initial plantings, Rohde says. After they're well established, existing vines can be mowed and pressed into new ground to expand production. One acre of vines taken out of production will plant five new acres. Plantings are irrigated daily until they root. The total cost of establishing a cranberry marsh ranges from $20,000 to $50,000 per acre, Lochner says.

"Cranberry is a crop you can't walk away from for a day," Kennedy says. Weed control can be a problem because of all the moisture. To keep soil between 4.5 and 5.5 pH, sulfur treatments may be necessary. Traps are set around the bog to monitor when insect levels get to the point of needing control.

The labor-intensive crop brings jobs with it -- and northern Minnesota needs them. "This is an economically depressed area; development is a top priority," Rohde says. "Within a year, we'll have 8 to 10 seasonal jobs and several full-time employees, even before the first harvest."

AURI is boosting cranberry development by financing equipment for both the Red Lake and Minnesota Cranberry Company operations. "It's a high value crop coming into this state with tremendous markets and jobs -- especially in an area that right now is not very strong agriculturally," says Brent Sorenson, manager of AURI's Crookston field office.

"There is a definite opportunity in the cranberry industry for Minnesota," says Kevin Edberg, Minnesota Department of Agriculture marketing director. "We do have access to water in northern Minnesota and suitable horticultural sites. There is a market-driven opportunity there ... for people with high capitalization, willing to identify the right sites, make long-term investments and be willing to work out the water access and water quality issues."

However, Minnesota isn't likely to match Wisconsin production, Edberg adds. That's because " we have a little shorter growing conditions in Minnesota," says Erv Oelke, director of the U of M Center for Alternative Plant and Animal Products who has been working with Kennedy. "It's just a matter of finding the right varieties with some research and production work."

Minnesota's cranberries are "wet picked" and must be quickly transported to processors for juicing or bagging. Cranberries bagged as fresh produce command a higher price because "the harvest is more labor intensive ... the cranberries must be dried off and stored in coolers to prevent rotting," Rohde says.

Since it's intensely tart, cranberry is usually blended with other fruit juices for beverages, jellies and sauces. Dried sweetened cranberries are sold as snacks or added to cereals and baked goods. Cranberries are high in vitamins, minerals and fiber and some health experts claim they help bladder infections.

Market picture
U.S. cranberry acreage totals 37,500, an increase of almost 23 percent since 1990, according to the Wall Street Journal. Ocean Spray Cranberries, Inc. controls 75 percent of U.S. cranberry production. The growers' cooperative, headquartered in Lakeville, Mass., controlled 85 percent until a few years ago when a few other processors gained momentum -- like Wisconsin's Northland Cranberries, Inc.

Wisconsin has 15,100 acres, and although Massachusetts has a couple thousand more acres, depressed yields have put total production below Wisconsin for two years. New Jersey, Oregon and Washington are the only other states with significant cranberry production.

European and Asian markets haven't even been tapped yet. "Only 10 percent goes overseas," Kennedy says. That's because the European market is a very expensive market to get into, Lochner says: "You're selling a product people have never heard of, never tasted. The only company willing to make that investment into market development, so far, is Ocean Spray."

Nonetheless, cranberries could be a new frontier for Minnesota agriculture. "Cranberry is one of the safest crops to grow," Kennedy says. "You can protect it from drought and flooding because you can move water in and out. You can protect against freezing, which citrus growers can't. And I'm confident the markets are going to hold."