SIXES — With the cranberry market in a state of depression, Sarah Osborne and her son, Whit Peters, decided to lift their own spirits.

Prices six years ago didn’t seem headed for a rebound, so they began producing value-added cranberry products at their family farm near Sixes in Southwest Oregon.

If nothing else, the business partners figured that selling ketchup, barbecue sauce, jam, vinegar and other goods under the Peters’ Cranberries label might cheer them up.

“Cranberries weren’t very fun for a while because they weren’t worth anything,” Osborne said. “We decided to do something else to take our minds off the doom and gloom.”

Tighter supplies nationwide have since improved the crop’s price outlook, but Peters’ Cranberries remains committed to its direct marketing venture.

Though it’s still a “labor of love” financially speaking, Osborne sees an opportunity to fill the “void” that often exists between cranberry producers and consumers in the region.

“A lot of farms don’t do a lot of farm-to-table stuff,” she said.

Other farmers in the Northwest also hope agritourism and value-added products will buttress their bottom lines.

Farm tours added to mix

Farmer Dennis Bowman also began selling his own brand of cranberry syrup and juice concentrate directly to the public when prices were at a low point several years ago.

Like Peters’ Cranberries, the vast majority of the crop grown at Bowman Bogs near Bandon is still sold to processors.

However, the 5% of fruit used for his Grandpa Jack’s products generates six times as much value as it would on the wholesale market.

Bowman also offers paid tours of his cranberry bogs, raising additional revenues while boosting his value-added product sales.

While favorable reactions from friends and family inspired his confidence in the products, Bowman has been surprised by the enthusiasm of farm visitors — some of whom travel from out-of-state.

“I was blown away people were interested,” he said. “People were showing up in their waders.”

Gourmet potential

While cranberries bring to mind a side dish for turkey or a mixer for vodka, the crop has more gourmet potential than many consumers realize.

Direct marketing offers an opportunity to show off this culinary versatility. Peters’ Cranberries, for example, infuses its cranberry sauce with Pinot noir wine.

“We have a lot of foodies in the family and everyone likes to cook. No boring cranberry sauces for this family,” Osborne said. “I don’t know that a lot of people know how to use them.”

Different harvest

Nick Kelly, who farms near Bandon, specializes in a product that allows home chefs to innovate on their own: Fresh cranberries that are sold at food cooperatives and natural grocery stores.

Unlike most cranberry operations, which flood their bogs to harvest the floating crop, his Black Moon Farms relies on a machine that picks the dry fruit while pruning the vines.

The piece of equipment is reminiscent of a push mower, but instead of grass clippings, the Furford picker-pruner fills burlap bags with cranberries.

Harvesting the crop this way is more labor-intensive, but it is gentler on the fruit, he said. Due to their longer shelf life and their organic certification, his fresh cranberries command 10 times the price of their wet-harvested counterparts headed for the processed market.

“It’s exponentially more money per pound,” Kelly said. “It’s a niche market, so I feel like why not try to tap into that potential?”

Despite the higher value of fresh cranberries, Kelly said he’s not worried about neighboring farmers emulating the dry harvest method because switching isn’t easy.

Bogs must be combed for several years with the picker-pruner before the vines grow accustomed to the equipment and harvest becomes efficient, he said. “I’m kind of in my own lane as far as the price and who I can sell to.”

Aside from cranberries, Black Moon Farms offers on-farm camping and produces Aronia berries, blueberries, chestnuts and sheep.

Diversification helps

Diversification is a way of life for many Northwest cranberry growers, who tend to have smaller operations, said Bob Donaldson, chairman of the Oregon Cranberry Growers Association and a farmer near Bandon.

Off-farm income is a way to insulate small farmers from the turbulent prices to which bigger farms have more exposure, Donaldson said.

“You can get a job in town and you can support your farm,” he said.

Most of the acreage farmed by Donaldson and his brother is devoted to sheep and cattle, with cranberries playing a small but important role, he said. Though the other agricultural markets are prone to their own fluctuations, they’re disconnected from the cranberry industry.

“All my crops are very volatile. You can get whiplash following the sheep market,” Donaldson said. “The cattle market is tough, too. It’s pretty thin margins.”

NW cranberries unique

Because the Northwest has a longer growing season the vines produce darker fruit, which manufacturers use to regulate the appearance of blended juice products, Donaldson said. “If you make a cran-raspberry or a cran-grape, it makes it red.”

Fruit from the Northwest also tends to be firmer, a critical trait for making the industry’s popular dried cranberries, he said.

Cranberries are sliced, dried and then rehydrated with juice and sugar to make these products, so they must keep their shape and not turn to mush during that process.

“If the fruit won’t slice, then it’s only good for concentrate,” Donaldson said.

Unusual crop

While the Northwest is one of the few regions of the U.S. where cranberries are grown, they’re not among the top 10 agricultural commodities in either Oregon or Washington.

The crop’s relative obscurity partly explains the appeal of on-farm tours, Bowman said. “I find that people don’t know we’re here.”

The top cranberry-growing state is Wisconsin, where more than half the 40,000 acres in the U.S. are planted, followed by Massachusetts, which has nearly a third of U.S. acreage.

Oregon’s 2,700 acres put it in fourth place, behind New Jersey’s 3,000 acres, while Washington is fifth with about 1,700 acres.

Challenges ahead

Though the economic prospects for cranberry farmers are brighter than a few years ago, the industry still faces pressures.

After witnessing more than a decade of financial struggles, many young people are hesitant to carry on family cranberry farms, Bowman said.

Property values along the Northwest coastline have risen, reducing the feasibility of new cranberry bogs while also making it harder for farmworkers to find affordable housing, he said.

Labor is a particular challenge because cranberry production doesn’t require a big year-round workforce, Bowman said. “Harvest is the only time we really need that much help. We can’t pay people just to stand around.”

The cranberry industry also isn’t counting on significant expansion in Wisconsin, said Tom Lochner, executive director of the Wisconsin State Cranberry Growers Association.

Renovating cranberry bogs costs about $30,000-$35,000 an acre, while installing new bogs is even costlier — especially if federal and state permits are required to alter wetlands, Lochner said.

Price cycles are hardly unique in agriculture, but the process is often drawn out in the cranberry industry, he said.

Planting and bringing cranberry vines to maturity requires time and money, so production increases slower than prices, Lochner said.

Output doesn’t rapidly plunge when prices decrease because farmers are reluctant to abandon their bogs, he said.

Downturns may persist until demand gradually catches up to the supply, Lochner said. “They tend to be longer because we’re a perennial crop.”

Too much of a good thing

The cranberry industry isn’t entirely at the mercy of market forces when faced with excess inventories, though.

Growers and handlers can be ordered to cut production by the Cranberry Marketing Committee, which is governed by federal regulations and overseen by the USDA.

The committee can require processors to decrease the volume of cranberry products they sell, said Edward Jesse, a retired agricultural economics professor who studied the industry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Farmers can also be ordered to decrease the amount of cranberries they deliver to handlers, which they accomplish by applying less fertilizer or taking other actions to reduce yields, he said. “You’re going right to the source of the product.”

These tools are used infrequently, partly to avoid criticism for distorting the market, said Jesse, who served on the marketing committee. “There’s a recognition among committee members that they can’t take it too far.”

In the past 20 years, the committee has only used the volume controls twice: In 2017, when handlers cut their sales by 15%, and in 2018, when growers decreased their output by 25%, according to Karen Cahill, its marketing director.

The reductions were based on five-year average production and sales levels, with the USDA issuing the final orders at the committee’s recommendation, she said. Committee members are prohibited from discussing price hikes, but instead aim to reduce the surplus of 100-pound barrels.

“Instead of talking about prices, we talk about inventory levels,” Cahill said.

As the 2017 harvest began, the industry had more than 9.7 million barrels of cranberries in cold storage, compared to total sales of 9.4 million barrels in the previous year.

“It’s untenable to have as much inventory as you have in sales,” she said.

Before this year’s harvest, the surplus had fallen to about 3.1 million barrels — down two-thirds from the peak several years ago.

“The volume controls did what they were supposed to do,” Cahill said.

Price optimism

Without as many leftover cranberries weighing on the market, growers have reason to be optimistic about prices for the 2022 crop.

Cranberries are selling for about 30-35 cents per pound on the commodity market, which is enough for most farmers to be “economically sustainable,” said Lochner of the Wisconsin growers association.

Consumption of processed cranberries has hovered at about 2 pounds per person in recent years, according to the marketing committee. In light of the dizzying number of food options available to consumers, the committee considers such stability a success.

“We’re competing for share of stomach with all kinds of different products,” Cahill said.

High-end food items, such as top cuts of steak, are likely to experience higher demand when prices decline, but that’s not the case with cranberries, said Harry Kaiser, an economist at Cornell University who’s studied the committee’s promotions.

The processed fruit is relatively inexpensive and demand for it is inelastic, which means it’s not liable to change much if prices rise or fall, Kaiser said.

“When you have a mature product like that, it’s hard to get increases in per capita consumption,” he said.

Even so, industry promotions have increased cranberry sales: Without the $1.77 million spent on CMC’s domestic marketing between 2015 and 2019, crop revenues would have been $15.4 million lower, according to Kaiser.

In other words, each dollar in domestic promotional spending translates to about $7.70 in revenues.

Last year, U.S. farmers received about $272 million for their cranberries, which includes fresh and processed fruit as well as cooperative proceeds, according to USDA.

The impact of international marketing is even greater, since those promotional dollars are magnified by matching funds from USDA. Each dollar spent on export promotions increases revenues by $20.70, Kaiser said.

Overseas promotions

Export promotions don’t focus on consumer advertising such as the famous “Got Milk?” campaign, but instead target food manufacturers, he said. By teaching foreign processors how to use and market cranberries, these efforts create demand for the crop.

“If you’re going to build a new market, you have to build the infrastructure first,” Kaiser said.

Value-added products from individual cranberry farms are unlikely to have much of an aggregate impact on crop sales nationally, but they can be worthwhile for those particular growers, he said.

“From a micro perspective, you can have a wildly successful venture,” Kaiser said.

While value-added producers have more control over what they charge for goods, prices on the commodity market are mostly determined by supplies.

Because cranberry farming is so geographically concentrated, major growing areas can have an outsized price impact.

“If you have a bad crop in Wisconsin, that’s a boon to the other regions,” said Jesse, the University of Wisconsin-Madison economist.