Berried Treasure

It is estimated that Americans consume more than 400 million pounds of cranberries each year, with the non-profit Agricultural Marketing Resource Center reporting that 20 percent of that total is gobbled up during the week of Thanksgiving alone.

Americans are not the only ones who love the tart treats; the demand for this fruit native to North America has gone global, with the United States leading the way as the top producer of cranberries in the world.

Although Indigenous peoples of North America have enjoyed this perennial superfood rich in disease-fighting antioxidants for thousands of years, the cultivation of cranberries didn’t begin until 1816. Revolutionary War veteran Captain Henry Hall of Dennis, Massachusetts, noticed that the wild cranberries in his bog grew better when sand blew over them. The revelation was the birth of the commercial cranberry industry.

Today, Massachusetts supplies one-third of the nation’s crop, ranking second in cranberry production behind Wisconsin, which harvests more than half of all cranberries in the country. (New Jersey, Oregon, and Washington produce the rest.)

We met with two cranberry growers, one from Wisconsin and one from Massachusetts, to learn more about this nutrient-dense fruit in a good-natured “battle of the berries.”

The Badger State
Despite Massachusetts’ head start in cranberry cultivation, “Wisconsin is the nation’s leading producer of cranberries, supplying 60 percent of the nation’s commercial crop,” says Mike Bartling, President of the Manitowish Cranberry Company, Inc., in Manitowish Waters, Wisconsin. Bartling’s family was one of eight families who moved north from central Wisconsin to Manitowish Waters after WWII in the hopes of expanding cranberry production into the Northwoods.

Today, almost 80 years later, the family’s 190-acre farm is one of five in Manitowish Waters. Since the late 1950s, the Bartling family has contracted with Ocean Spray–an agricultural cooperative owned by more than 700 farmer-families like the Bartlings–to process and sell their annual harvest, which ranges from 45,000 to 70,000 barrels (each barrel is equivalent to 100 pounds).

“I think a lot of people think cranberries grow in water–but they don’t. We just harvest them in water,” says Bartling, who began his cranberry-growing career on his family’s farm in the 1980s alongside his brother Peter. “Cranberries are a wetland crop, so they need to be kept moist but not flooded, or they won’t grow.”

When harvest time rolls around in the fall, the Bartlings flood the bogs, causing the hollow, red fruit to float off the tops of their low-growing woody vines–a method called wet harvesting, which is how most cranberries are now harvested. Bartling’s yearly crop, like 95 percent of the world’s cranberry crop, is grown for processed cranberry products such as Craisins® and juice. Only five percent of cranberries are destined to be sold as fresh fruit, and those are dry-harvested using a hand-operated mechanical picker that combs the berries off the vine.

Over his career as a third-generation cranberry grower, Mike has served on the board of Ocean Spray. During that time, he has overseen the switch from growing the Searles variety of cranberries to the earlier ripening and higher-yielding Stevens variety. He has also crafted and fine-tuned farming equipment and addressed various challenges along the way.

Although Mike’s brother Peter has retired from the family business, he still lends a hand during harvest season, and Mike, who considers himself semi-retired, maintains an advisory role. As fourth-generation cranberry growers, Mike’s sons Steven and David now carry on the legacy, overseeing the day-to-day operations of the family business.

The Bay State
Decas Cranberry Products, Inc. in Carver, Massachusetts, started almost 90 years ago as a family business when brothers William, Nicholas, and Charles set up a pushcart to sell fresh cranberries. The brothers did so well the first year that they were able to purchase a 15-acre cranberry bog in the neighboring town of Rochester.

Over the next few generations, the Decas family expanded the business considerably. Not only did they purchase an additional 400 acres of farmland to grow their own cranberry crop, but they also began contracting with fellow cranberry growers to sell their harvests. In the 1990s, the family built a processing plant to sort, clean, and transform cranberries into fruit juice and sweetened dried cranberries. In 2021, Decas Cranberry Products was purchased by Fruit d’Or, a cranberry and wild blueberry processing company. “We are carrying on the tradition, organizational structure, and core values of the original company,” says James Ross, a Grower Relations and Agronomy Manager at the company.

Ross, who grew up on his family’s Cape Cod cranberry farm, designs and oversees projects to maximize the quality and yield of cranberry crops. He works as a liaison between Decas Cranberry Products/Fruit d’Or and its community of cranberry growers. “One of my favorite things about my job is meeting someone who is taking a larger step in their role in the industry,” he says, “and making those connections with the next generation of growers and seeing a successful and sustainable transition of these farms.”

“For most of us, growing cranberries is a labor of love,” says Ross, who says the farmers enjoy producing a fruit that is inherently good for people. “We like being able to share a superior product with our friends, families, and customers,” he adds. “That is always what we are striving for.”