How will cranberries take the heat?
New Jersey’s iconic crop faces a range of threats from climate change
The numbers are still coming in, but it looks like 2022 was another banner year for the New Jersey cranberry crop.
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, farmers were on track to harvest 590,000 barrels of the sweet-tart little fruit that grows like mad in the sandy bogs of the Pine Barrens.
In 2021, New Jersey farmers were able to grow more barrels of cranberries per acre, 203, than farmers in any of the four other big cranberry-producing states — Massachusetts, Oregon, Wisconsin and Washington.
But the state’s iconic cranberry crop faces threats from the excessive heat, drought and extreme weather that have arrived with climate change. Scientists say cranberry agriculture in New Jersey sits on a delicate perch easily shaken by weather extremes.
“We’re living right on the edge,” said Peter Oudemans, a plant biologist at the Rutgers University cranberry and blueberry research station in Burlington County. “The climate and the conditions that enable cranberries to grow in the Pine Barrens are changing before our eyes. The threat is real.”
Last year, rogue storms that tracked from the South through coastal New England devastated cranberry crops in Massachusetts, which is the nation’s second-largest cranberry producer after Wisconsin. USDA statistics show that average yields in Massachusetts were more than 25% lower than New Jersey’s.
The torrential rain that beset Massachusetts cranberry growers came on the heels of a summer-long drought. Berries that had struggled to survive the dry conditions were suddenly awash; harmful fungus that thrives on moisture took off.
A bullet dodged
“It was an absolutely horrible year up there,” said Bruce Eklund, a USDA official who tracks farm production in the Garden State. “New Jersey is very lucky to have dodged that bullet.”
Experts like Eklund say that cranberry cultivation, probably more than most other types of agriculture, depends on a ready abundance of clean water. In New Jersey, growers say they have learned to follow a simple formula: Every 1 acre of productive cranberry bog needs 9 acres of surrounding woodland and watershed.
The cranberry itself is 90% water. But contrary to popular belief, it does not grow under water, but on ground-hugging vines that thrive in the sandy wetlands that are a dominant feature in the 1.1 million acre Pinelands National Preserve.
‘The availability of all this water — all this clean water — makes everything possible for us.’
— Bill Haines, cranberry grower
The state Department of Agriculture says farmers have been growing cranberries in New Jersey since at least the 1840s. Almost all cranberries harvested in the state are sold to the Ocean Spray Cooperative, a profit-sharing consortium of more than 700 farms.
Every fall, cranberry farmers flood their bogs and scoop up the buoyant berries in a rustic ceremony that involves bog booms — floating barriers that help farmers gather the berries — as well as water rakes and a lot of wading in knee-deep water. The harvest usually stretches through October and into November.
After harvest, the bogs are undammed, and the water is allowed to drain out and back into the ground. But sometime in December farmers re-flood the bogs and keep them under water throughout the winter to protect the plants from snow and ice.
All of this is possible because the Pine Barrens sit atop one of the largest, purest lakes of underground water in the eastern United States. The Kirkwood-Cohansey Aquifer contains more than 17 trillion gallons of water and spreads beneath 3,000 square miles of South Jersey. The aquifer is shallow and easy to tap through the sandy Pinelands soil.
Clean, clean water
“The availability of all this water — all this clean water — makes everything possible for us,” said Bill Haines, a fourth-generation cranberry farmer from Burlington County who is among the state’s biggest producers.
Haines, in an interview in mid-November, told NJ Spotlight News that his farm posted a record harvest in 2022 of more than 35 million pounds of cranberries. He said it was a quality crop of well-preserved berries with no sign of blight.
The big healthy berries came despite a long, hot and dry stretch in the summer which, according to the USDA figures, depressed New Jersey’s production of peaches and soybeans.
Haines said Pine Barrens cranberry growers like himself survived the hot spell by carefully controlled irrigation that kept developing berries cool enough but not so damp they might rot or develop fungus blight. Getting the irrigation level right, he said, is made easier by new technology developed by Rutgers University that helps farmers monitor soil moisture and fruit temperature.
‘I wish I had a crystal ball and could tell you everything’s going to be alright, and we’ll keep on producing cranberries like we have forever.’
— Peter Oudemans, Rutgers University
In recent years, Rutgers has developed a “fake cranberry” that contains sensors and is able to relay data to farmers. The fakes are manufactured on 3-D printers and spread among the cranberry vines.
Traditionally, Haines said, farmers would water their plants twice a week with about an inch of water per plant. But as the weather has grown more fickle, farmers have fine-tailored their approach and now irrigate at different times by varying amounts.
Adapting to change
“This year’s plants were more or less bottle-fed,” Haines joked. “When you grow cranberries for a living, you’ve got to be willing to change, to try new things as conditions change.”
In addition to growing favorite cranberry varieties like the Early Black, which has been grown in New Jersey and elsewhere for nearly 200 years, Haines’ farm is now producing newer cultivars developed at Rutgers. Varieties like the Crimson Queen, the Mullica Queen and the Haines — named after Bill’s family — are now grown over the 1,375 acres of bog on the farm.
Those new cultivars were developed at Rutgers’ Philip E. Marucci Center for Blueberry & Cranberry Research in Chatsworth, only a few miles from the Haines farm in Hog Wallow, a storied Pine Barrens locale in one of most rural stretches of New Jersey.
The center was named for the late Rutgers entomologist whose work on controlling malaria outbreaks made him a scientist of world renown. Marucci also developed a formula to predict deadly frost in cranberry beds.
Today, the Rutgers research station maintains 22 of its own cranberry bogs and is home to plant pathologists, geneticists, entomologists and scientists who study weeds. Oudemans, the director of the center, said New Jersey cranberry farmers have learned to work closely with the scientific researchers, especially as warming temperature and extreme weather stresses the cranberry ecosystem.
Oudemans said sudden, intense rainstorms like those experienced by the Massachusetts farmers can devastate cranberry bogs, sometimes taking them out of commission for months. Surging waters can wash out crops and turn bogs sodden as fruit rots and plants develop fungal infections.
In September 2012, the Haines farm and others were hit hard by a storm that dumped 16 inches of water in a few hours. It took three weeks, Haines said, for operations to return to normal.
“I wish I had a crystal ball and could tell you everything’s going to be alright, and we’ll keep on producing cranberries like we have forever,” Oudemans said. “But the fact is we’re in an incredibly unpredictable period. The best we can do is get ready.”
This article is part of a special series by NJ Spotlight News and funded by the William Penn Foundation. Go to njspotlightnews.org/Delaware-Watershed to visit the project homepage. Send us your stories and photos about the Delaware River region.
