Organic cranberry supplies enough for holiday season

It’s good news for organic cranberries this season. In a reversal from the last couple of years, there should be sufficient organic cranberry supplies for both the 2024 Thanksgiving and Christmas holiday seasons. Claus von Bauer, head salesman for The Cranberry Network, which is based in Wisconsin Rapids, Wisconsin, told OPN Connect that this year’s organic cranberry crop is larger than it has been for the last two seasons. He said the Canadian province of Quebec and the U.S. state of Wisconsin are the two largest producers of organic cranberries. While Quebec’s fresh market volume in that category has dropped this year, Wisconsin has more than made up for it with an increase in volume for 2024.

Harvesting organic cranberries.

“This year, we believe there will be fresh organic cranberries available for Christmas,” he said, just as the harvesting of the crop was finishing up.

Von Bauer noted that the harvest typically wraps up during the first week of November, so, speaking on Nov. 1, he advised that he couldn’t be certain of the final count until reports from all the growers were in. He added that lower volume across the cranberry category in 2023 led to higher prices for the output.

“Quebec had a bad crop in 2023,” he said, adding that the processing prices spiked caused some growers in Canada to switch their organic acreage back to conventional growing practices to increase their yields and take advantage of those higher prices moving forward. Von Bauer opined that Canadian organic growers are “especially entrepreneurial,” and tend to base their production practices on market conditions. He added that, for Quebec growers, it is the processing price that drives the marketing decisions rather than the fresh market price, which accounts for only a small percentage of their sales.

Solid predictions for U.S. organic cranberries

New plantings of this perennial crop take around 5 years to reach peak production.

Von Bauer expects the U.S. market on fresh organic cranberries to be solid this year, offering about a 30% premium for the category over the conventional price.

John Stauner, owner of James Lake Farms in Three Lakes, Wisconsin, calls himself the “largest organic cranberry grower in Wisconsin” with 189 acres. That would make him the largest grower of organic cranberries in the United States as he said Wisconsin is the only significant producing-state of organic cranberries. “Quebec is number one with significant acreage, but we don’t know how much…at least 1,000 acres,” he said.

But Stauner has also heard that Quebec’s organic acreages have declined this year by at least a couple hundred acres. He added that, while he’s not certain of Wisconsin’s acreage, he’s sure that it’s less than 1,000 acres in total. “We are a pretty small grower group,” he said of Wisconsin’s cranberry growers. “There are about 250 growers and maybe 10 of us grow organics.”

For his part, Stauner is 100% percent focused on the fresh organic cranberry market. He agreed that 2024 will be a good year for the category. “We are seeing an increase in yields on all varieties. It has been a good year with very good growing conditions.”

For cranberries, that means no major hail or rain storms during the bloom in the spring nor during the harvest in October and November. As such, James Lake Farms has harvested enough cranberries to fill the shelves during the Thanksgiving pull, as well as to have some left over for retailers to display for the Christmas holiday.

‘A good price’

The cranberry harvest should be enough to keep supplies in stores through the holidays.

Stauner said the FOB price on fresh organic cranberries, which are typically packed in 8-ounce and 12-ounce consumer packs, has remained steady for the last couple of years at what he called “a good price.”

He added that organic sales are solid with increasing demand every year. While acreage is not going up significantly, he did say growers are experimenting with newer varieties to see if they can improve yields and increase production in that manner. But Stauner cautioned that this is a long-range project since cranberries are a perennial crop and new plantings take around five years to reach peak production.

Though he did agree that there will be some organic packs available for supermarket shelves for Christmas, Stauner still urged consumers to “buy them when they see them. Buy one pack for Thanksgiving and buy another for Christmas and put it in the freezer.”

Stauner revealed that a fresh pack of cranberries will work equally well for home cooks after a month in the freezer.