New Jersey blueberries are experiencing strong market demand.

“Demand has been excellent this year. I raised my prices, so I was actually anticipating my retail volume going down, but it's not. I am pleasantly surprised that our moving volumes have increased,” says Tim Haines of Haines Berry Farm in Pemberton, New Jersey.

Haines notes that this year's blueberry crop is also slightly smaller than last year's crop and had an earlier start to the season on June 16. “We had a difficult spring with some frosts, but we seem to have weathered it very well. The blueberries are bigger than usual and the quality is excellent because it hasn't rained much. Things are going well,” he says, noting that the harvest usually ends on August 1.

Tighter supplies?
He also points out that he has exceeded the peak supply at the moment for blueberries. “There are not many blueberries at the moment. I don't think we have much more than a couple of weeks left,” says Haines. “For example, typically at the production terminal in Philadelphia, there would be blueberries from Michigan and sometimes even Oregon, Washington and British Columbia once they filled their local markets. But they are not there. I think there might be a little bit of a volume issue right now.”

With the smaller crop factoring in those high prices, so are the higher input costs in blueberry production. “Some of our inputs, such as fertilizers, have increased between 50 and 100 percent. I only increased my prices by 10 percent,” says Haines. And while growers across the country continue to see access to labor as an issue, he says Haines Berry Farm hasn't had a problem with that. “We did very well with our work. We had to pay everyone more because, like us, their bills are higher and they need more money. But other than that, a lot of people went out to work,” he says.