Oregon Blueberry Industry Given a SWOT Analysis

As part of their presentation at the Oregon Blueberry Conference in February, Amelie Aust and Dave Brazelton of Fall Creek Farm and Nursery delivered a SWOT analysis of the industry.

A strategic planning technique used by organizations to identify strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (thus SWOT), the analysis typically is used by businesses, but can be done on an industry-wide level, Aust said.

“You can do it at an industry level, regionally or even globally,” Aust said.

In performing the SWOT for the Oregon industry, Aust and Brazelton looked at a range of factors, including land availability, water, labor, proximity to market, infrastructure and variety quality. Using these factors, Aust said, they were able to develop a fairly straight forward analysis to recognize threats and inherent weaknesses within the industry, as well as strengths.

Under strengths, Brazelton identified yields. “Oregon has the highest yields in the world in mature fields,” he said. “Others are getting better, but Oregon still has the highest yields.”

Also, he said, Oregon and Washington have the least yield volatility in the U.S. He noted that Georgia, for example, went from a 30-million-pound crop to a 98-million-pound crop in a matter of two years, and without much acreage increase.

“We don’t have that volatility in Oregon,” he said. “We don’t have those big swings.”

Also, Aust pointed out, the quality of blueberries in the Pacific Northwest is extremely high, in part because of the region’s warm days and cool nights. And the Pacific Northwest has a global brand that is recognized for its quality on an international level, Brazelton said.

“As you travel around the world, it is a strong brand,” he said. “It is looked at as an environmentally clean area with high-quality products.”

Also, Brazelton pointed out, the Pacific Northwest has an unmatched sophistication when it comes to individually quick-frozen (IQF) processing. “IQF processing is dominant in the Pacific Northwest,” he said. “Nowhere in the world do they do blueberries in this way, in this sophistication.”

Aust singled out the Northwest’s high-quality of hand labor as another strength. “There may be cheaper labor elsewhere, but when you add it up by the pound, we have some of the most productive hand labor in the world,” she said.

Organizational support was another strength she identified. “We have a unique conglomerate of organizations, like the Commission, the Oregon Department of Agriculture, Extension and other organizations that are engaged in our industry, and you don’t see that everywhere,” Aust said.

A weakness the two identified was distance to markets for Pacific Northwest blueberry producers. “We aren’t close to anything here,” Brazelton said. “We are multiple days to the East Coast, where most of the berries are eaten.”

Also, he said, labor costs are high in Oregon, and there are large volumes of marginal varieties still in play, and they are getting harder to sell.

Also, Brazelton said the region has a shortage of processing capacity. “When the Duke and Draper season comes on, it overloads our processors,” he said.

Brazelton also identified a shortage of farm managers and good-quality technical farm help as a weakness. “It is striking, when we go to some other areas, they have a large group of people coming in all the time that are proficient agricultural engineers,” he said.

As for opportunities, Brazelton went back to the fact that marginal varieties are still being grown in the Pacific Northwest. “Clean out the dogs,” he said. “If you’ve got fields producing four tons an acre on the wrong ground, this is costing you money. At today’s prices, if it is not doing well, maybe it should be in another crop.”

Opportunities to mechanize present another opportunity, he said, as well as selling local.

“Almost 16 million pounds moved locally here in Oregon (last year),” he said. “If you figure three dollars a pound, that is almost 50 million dollars. There are hundreds of thousands of cars driving around that want to spend money at your farms. Are you taking advantage of that?”

As for threats, Brazelton identified labor availability and increasing regulations, as well as climate change.

“One of the things we’ve done in our breeding program is that if we don’t produce varieties that can manage 95 degrees, it probably shouldn’t make it in fresh,” he said. “It is getting warmer and hotter in the summer.”

He also identified increases in competition from the international marketplace as a threat, singling out Peru. “Peru is coming in September,” he said. “They are here. They will be here. We can absolutely compete with that quality, but not with the varieties that we have now.”