Canada: Excellent growing conditions for cranberries in BC

BC had excellent growing conditions for cranberries this year: good pollination and fruit set and an amazing summer has resulted in larger than normal fruit size. Fresh harvest is already underway. Fresh harvest is a "dry harvest", meaning we do not flood our fields to get cranberries out of the field for the fresh market. Fresh harvest cranberries are what you see when you visit your local grocer's produce department around this time of year. As we think locally grown and supporting local farmers, one way you can know you are purchasing BC cranberries is to flip over that Ocean Spray bag, if you see "Product of Canada" on the back of the package those cranberries were harvested right here in BC!

This year, cranberry growers are also pleased to have the support of the Province of BC through the Buy Local Campaign, to tell more BC consumers about who we are and what we do. This is just one more way to assist our farmers in reaching out to our neighbours and communities.

Our farmers love this time of year, it is the culmination of a year of hard work and truly is the opportunity to see the fruits of their labour in the most visually appealing way! Most of our cranberries are harvested for the process market (sweetened dried cranberries, juice, etc) which is done by flooding our fields to get the crop out. It is a huge production to get 95,000,000 pounds out of our fields are careful coordination with receiving stations over a period of about 2 months is required.

While we know that it is not always easy to identify BC Cranberries in stores when you shop, you may visit our website at bccranberries.com to find out about our producer vendors that do have BC cranberries available. Another way to support our BC farmers is actually through purchasing Ocean Spray cranberry products.

For more information:
Geraldine Auston
BC Cranberry Marketing Commission
Tel: +1 604 820 4451
Email: gauston@shaw.ca
www.bccranberries.com