Berries fly off the shelves, no matter what the price

WASHINGTON — Raspberries and blueberries are the bonanza fruit of the day, flying out of supermarkets in teeny boxes at super prices.

They're everything the modern consumer demands: candylike, convenient, famously healthful and available year round, thanks largely to Southern Hemisphere farmers.

The market is so hot that domestic production and imports are growing and — in defiance of usual market economics — supply, demand and price are at record highs.

The berry bonanza is so hot that there's a two-year wait for plants from commercial nurseries. And consumer demand? It's so keen that when supplies run short, as they do in April when Southern Hemisphere production falls off, many supermarkets shift from 6-ounce boxes to 4.4-ounce boxes without changing their prices.

"They're a splurge, a constant splurge," Carol Bleecker, of Bethesda, Md., said as she added a $3.99 half-pint of Chilean blueberries to her shopping cart. "I like how they taste and I think they're good for me."

That combination is what increased the national appetite for berries, industry leaders said. The health claim also desensitized people to price, overturning decades of experience among berry producers that a 10-cent price increase could drop demand by 40 percent.

"I wouldn't believe it if I weren't living through it," said John Shelford, president of Naturipe Farms, a multinational berry grower and shipper in Naples, Fla.

"It's been astronomical," said Henry Bierlink, executive director of the Washington Red Raspberry Commission in Lynden, Whatcom County.

They cited several factors in addition to healthfulness to explain the boom. Among them:

• Year-round availability. Now that they're always in produce departments, Shelford said, "consumers look for and plan to use them." So they buy more.

• Globalization. Chile has been the main U.S. source of winter berries in recent years. Its summer coincides with the U.S. winter, and its lower land costs and lower farm wages offset the added shipping costs. Mexico is gaining, mainly in raspberries, thanks to new heat-tolerant varieties and cheaper shipping.

• Fast and reliable refrigerated transport. Raspberries picked in Chile on Monday are air-freighted from Santiago to Miami, New York, Dallas and Los Angeles late Tuesday. With refrigerated trucking, they'll be in shopping carts nationwide by late Thursday or Friday. Blueberries mostly come by ship from the Southern Hemisphere. They're cooled to virtual dormancy at 32 degrees two hours off the bush and delivered in 20 to 30 days.

• Forgiving consumers. Long-distance raspberries must be picked firm and orange if they're to arrive in supermarkets semifirm and deep crimson. That entails a considerable taste trade-off, said Chad Finn, a small-fruit breeder at the U.S. Department of Agriculture's research center in Corvallis, Ore. Lost taste doesn't seem to matter to consumers, though, he said, as long as "the berry looks good."