U.S. Cranberry loadings will increase a little this season, while the nation’s potato shipments final count for last season were down.
The nation’s 2016 cranberry shipments are forecast at 8.59 million barrels, up slightly from last season, according to the USDA.
Wisconsin production, the largest cranberry shipping state, is up from 4.9 million barrels in 2015 to 5.2 million barrels. Meanwhile,in Massachusetts, the second leading state, fell from 2.4 million barrels in 2015 to 2 million barrels.
At 588,000 barrels, New Jersey production is off from 595,000 barrels in 2015, while Oregon production is tabbed at 530,000 barrels, down from 562,000 barrels the previous season.
Harvesting of fresh and processed berries in Massachusetts began the third week of September and should be completed by the third week of November.
Massachusetts cranberry growers have been harvesting fresh and processed fruit from respective dry and wet bogs. In the water bogs, which account for about 85 percent of the fruit, which goes to processing, fruit is grown in dry bogs or fields. Then the fields are flooded with water to bring fruit to the surface.
The fruit is harvested with spindle-type machinery and once the berries surface at the top of the water, the free-flowing berries are vacuumed into a machine that removes leaves, litter and chaff. It is then loaded into trucks and delivered to a receiving station.
Concerning cranberries for the fresh harvest, gasoline-powered machines are used that drive over the vines and gently pull berries out of the vines and into burlap bags. The fruit is brought to the shoreline and sorted before being transported to a receiving station for cleaning and packaging.
U.S. Potato Shipments
About 441 million cwt. of potatoes were produced in the U.S. in the 2015-16 marketing season.
That’s up slightly from an estimate in January but slightly lower than production in the previous season, according to a report from the USDA’s Agriculture’s National Agricultural Statistics Service.
Major producers included:
- Idaho, 130.4 million cwt.;
- Washington, 100.3 million cwt.;
- Wisconsin, 27.8 million cwt.;
- North Dakota, 27.6 million cwt.;
- Colorado, 22.6 million cwt.;
- Oregon, 21.8 million cwt.;
- Michigan, 17.6 million cwt.;
- Maine, 16.2 million cwt.; and
- Minnesota, 16.2 million cwt.
About 122 million cwt. of the 2015-16 total were for the fresh market.
The number of acres harvested in 2015, 1.05 million acres, was up slightly from 2014, but yields fell from 421 cwt. to 418 cwt. per acre.