COURTESY / WILD BLUEBERRY COMMISSION OF MAINE
Eric Venturini
December 22, 2023
After tough year, Maine's wild blueberry growers seek state tax relief
Courtesy / Brodis Blueberries
Brodis Blueberries in Hope, one of Maine’s larger independent producers, has been in business for over 150 years.
With production costs at blueberry farms skyrocketing in recent years, the Wild Blueberry Commission of Maine is asking the state legislature for a one-year hiatus from the state’s wild blueberry tax for growers.
If successful, the relief would affect grower tax payments on the 2024 crop.
“Some of Maine’s wild blueberry producers tell me that input costs for wild blueberry production may have doubled over the last three years,” said Eric Venturini, the commission’s executive director.
The per-pound tax of one-and-a-half cents was enacted by the state legislature in 1945 and led to the establishment of the Wild Blueberry Commission of Maine and UMaine’s Blueberry Hill Farm in Jonesboro, the only university-based wild blueberry research facility in the nation, according to the University of Maine.
The tax was established as an investment in research, advocacy, marketing and promotion.
By 2020, the industry was in crisis due to low pricing that didn’t meet production costs.
Venturini, who took the helm at the commission that year, said at the time that rising costs of production and shrinking price per pound were major problems plaguing the industry. To produce a pound of blueberries costs 60 to 70 cents.
In 2012, farmers were just above the break-even level, receiving 76 cents per pound. In 2016, they were getting 27 cents a pound. For 2017, some growers received 35 cents.
By 2019, growers drastically reduced their harvest, and some left the business altogether.
In Hope, Knox County, Brodis Blueberries has experienced the ups and downs.
“It’s been a roller coaster on the price we receive,” Ron Howard, one of the farm’s owners, told Mainebiz. “Over the last dozen years or so, it’s been as low as 25 cents a pounds, and in some cases as high as 75 cents a pound.”
Courtesy / Brodis Blueberries
Major production expenses included escalating costs for labor, field inputs and honeybee hive rentals, said Ron Howard of Brodis Blueberries in Hope.
Brodis Blueberries, established more than 150 years ago, harvests up to 200,000 pounds from half of its 170 acres each year. Howard hires up to 35 seasonal employees per year for the three-week harvest. Primary expenses are labor, field inputs such as fertilizer and rental of honeybee hives to pollinate the fields. Costs are escalating but revenue on fresh and frozen blueberries has been unreliable, he said.
In recent years, the farm has tackled the problem through diversification and direct-marketing. That’s included wholesaling to wine, vinegar, jam and pie producers. Howard’s son Jeremy, with a friend, started Blue Barren Distillery which uses wild blueberries in a number of its products.
“We couldn’t sustain our businesses without diversifying,” said Howard.
Venturini said the commission is seeking long-term solutions to the growing challenge of farm profitability.
Nationally, specialty crops — including wild blueberries — have higher labor costs than any other agricultural sector, including what the U.S. Department of Agriculture earlier this year estimated would be a 4.4% increase in labor costs for the 2023 growing season.
At the national level, the cost of U.S. agricultural inputs has increased by 28% since 2020; some input costs have risen 78% over the same period.
The commission decided to seek the tax hiatus as a way to provide farmers with relief.
“We continue, unabated, to carry on the commission’s vital work of seeking long-term solutions to the growing challenge of farm profitability,” he said.
Maine produces 99% of all the wild blueberries in the country. In 2022, the harvest was 77.6 million pounds.
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