WORLD BLUEBERRY PRODUCTION CONTINUES ASCENT 

Cort Brazelton of Fall Creek Farm and Nursery at the Oregon Blueberry Conference said new production in Peru, Mexico, Europe and Asia has global blueberry production on a continued gradual ascent.

The rate of growth of blueberry production in North America has slowed, but the expansion of substrate and covered acres and new production in Mexico, Peru, northern Europe and Asia has global production on a gradual ascent, according to Cort Brazelton of Fall Creek Farm and Nursery.

In a world statistic review at the 2018 Oregon Blueberry Conference in Salem February 19, Brazelton, also a founder of the International Blueberry Organization (IBO), said global fresh and processed blueberry production jumped by a combined 400 million pounds between 2012 and 2016 to right around 1.4 billion pounds, while acreage in blueberries, estimated at 250,000, essentially doubled between 2008 and 2016.

Driven by increased consumption in northern European and Asia Pacific countries, production in those areas has been growing steadily, albeit from a low base, Brazelton said. (In Europe, for example, blueberry acres nearly quadrupled between 2008 and 2016, he said.)

And Peru has gone from essentially zero production in 2010 to a projected production of 120 million pounds in the 2017-18 season, (which spans from July of 2017 to June of 2018). “Peru could supersede Spain in the next (world production) report (as the fourth biggest global producer of blueberries),” Brazelton said.

Still, it is in the U.S., Chile and Canada where most blueberry production occurs; and of those three, at 568 million pounds in 2017, the U.S. is by far the biggest producer.

“We are not growing our plantings at the same rate in the U.S. and Canada that we were,” Brazelton said. “We are not growing volume utilization at 15 percent anymore.” But utilization still is growing at a rate of 8 to 9 percent, which is significant considering the higher base, he said.

The big news out of Chile last year, where growers produced about 270 million pounds of blueberries on 39,000 acres, was the increase in processed production. Last year, according to Andres Armstrong, executive director of the Chilean Blueberry Committee, 30 percent of Chilean production went into the processed market, a rate significantly higher than average. It’s a rate, incidentally, that Brazelton doesn’t expect Chile to duplicate every year.

“Processing in Chile is a byproduct of the fresh business,” Brazelton said. “That isn’t their focus.”

Of the 1.4 billion pounds of global production last year, two-thirds went into the fresh market, Brazelton said.

In the U.S., 295 million pounds of the 568 million pounds of total production went fresh, while 273 million pounds went processed.

Overall, Brazelton said he expects Chilean acres to decline slightly in the years ahead. “I would expect fewer hectares in Chile ten years out,” he said. He expects production in Mexico, today at 66.5 million pounds, to continue its expansion, possibly more than tripling by 2023 and supplying fresh fruit throughout the counter season in the fall, winter and spring months. Production in Argentina, today at 39 million pounds, has largely leveled off, he said.

Total production for North and South America last year was just under 1.2 billion pounds.