2009 Blueberry Season Proves Fruitful for Mississippi Growers

The 2009 blueberry season in Mississippi has just about come to a close and all reports indicate it’s been a good year for the berries. MPB’s Phoebe Judge has more.

Charlie Dabbs is walking through a row of picked over blueberry bushes on his farm in Saucier,

"I’m done. Yeah I finished Sunday, we just ran out of berries. The crop itself was real good, it was really good.”

Dabbs is one of about 200 blueberry growers in Mississippi most of who are located in the southeast corner of the state. Mississippi growers harvested 5 million pounds of blueberries this year, up from 3.5 million pounds last year. While some of those berries stayed in state through farmers markets and U-Pick operations, a majority were shipped wholesale all over the country. Mississippi ranks around seventh in the nation in blueberry production, but for six weeks the state is one of the only places producing the fruit in the county. Donna Marshall, is a horticulturist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Southern Horticultural Laboratory in Poplarville,

“That’s one of the great things about being in the warmer area is that as the temperature warms up the berries are going to ripen up pretty quick. We are just one of the first ones in on the berry market, so we get premium prices.”

Blueberry prices drop dramatically once crops begin to come ripen in places like New Jersey and Michigan. Mississippi growers have seen prices drop 50% in the last few weeks, but Marshall says this is not a new trend, and growers in the state have adapted by growing early season blooming varieties, and picking as much as possible as quickly as possible once the fruit gets on the bushes.