A24 EZ RE THE WASHINGTON POST.SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 22 , 2020
An industry is born
Commercial cultivation began in the Unit-
ed States when Henry Hall, a Revolutionary
War veteran and ship’s captain, first grew
cranberries in Dennis on Cape Cod in 1816.
Cranberries, an excellent source of fiber and
vitamin C, accompanied sailors and whalers
on voyages around the world to prevent
scurvy.
But in the 1990s, Wisconsin passed Massa-
chusetts as the nation’s biggest source of
cranberries, producing more than half of the
nation’s crop. The rest is rather evenly divided
among New Jersey, Oregon and Washington
state. British Columbia, Quebec and Chile also
grow cranberries.
Wisconsin’s top perch is due to newer,
rectangular bogs filled with varieties of cran-
berries that are bigger and produce greater
yields. With fewer competing pressures on
land and water than Massachusetts, Wiscon-
sin now has about twice as many acres devoted
to cranberries as the Bay State. “We’re looking
at Wisconsin’s taillights,” McCaffrey said.
By contrast, Massachusetts bogs are older
and follow the contours of the landscape,
which make them harder to harvest efficiently.
To pick cranberries, bogs are flooded with
water and then a device — a specialized reel, or
a contraption attached to the back of a tractor
(McCaffrey’s is called a “Ruby Slipper”) — is
driven through them, bumping the vines to
separate the berries from their stems. Because
the berries are hollow, they float, covering the
surface of the water in a ruby red mosaic.
Workers corral the berries using a boom
and then pump or pull them into a truck. Wet
harvested cranberries are used for juice, sauce
and dried cranberries, which increasingly
drive the market — juice is now the byproduct
of dried cranberries and not the other way
around.
A small fraction of cranberries are dry-har-
vested in a time-consuming and labor-inten-
sive process in which they are plucked, raked
or collected by machines on dry bogs. These
berries are sold fresh, more of a specialty item.
Aside from the recent droughts, which have
made wet harvesting a challenge, one of the
biggest changes to cranberry growing in Mas-
sachusetts over the past 30 years has been a
significant decline in the amount of i ce during
winter.
Ice is especially important to cranberry
production, as growers would typically spread
sand over the frozen surface of the bog every
couple of years, in a process called ice sanding.
As the ice melted, the sand would trickle down
into the bog, burying old leaves, suppressing
disease, and reducing pests and fungi while
encouraging upright stems and replenishing
the sand beneath.
Without enough winter ice, growers wait
until the spring and use barges to drop the
sand into flooded bogs, or spread it dry,
neither of which is as efficient as ice sanding,
said Wick of the Cape Cod Cranberry Growers’
Association. “Winters don’t really come like
they have been,” he said.
Ice is central in another way. In winter, bogs
would freeze over naturally and that would
protect the plants. If they are surrounded by
ice, they stay at 32 degrees Fahrenheit, rather
than dropping to the air or bog temperatures,
which can be much lower in winter and kill the
fruit.
Now, with less naturally occurring ice,
many growers have installed temperature and
soil-moisture sensors in their bogs so that if
the temperature drops too low, they can flood
and freeze their bogs to protect the plants.
Despite the challenges posed by climate
change, the McCaffreys are pushing ahead,
trying to preserve a way of life they love while
feeding millions of people who may not con-
sider the origins of the cranberry sauce on
their holiday table.
“Anything to do with agriculture is stress,”
Billy McCaffrey said. “But survival is a very
strong drive. I see what nature is doing, and
what I’m doing, as a farmer, is trying to help
nature.”
[email protected]the equation, cranberries grew in the wild
from Canada down to the mountains of Geor-
gia. Historically, they have done best in sandy
acidic soils, like those of parts of New England,
which were the result of glaciers moving and
melting northward, leaving kettle ponds and
bogs in their wake. For thousands of years,
Indigenous peoples used — and they continue
to use — wild cranberries for food but also as
medicine.
On Martha’s Vineyard, one of the most
important celebrations of the Wampanoag
Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah) is Cranberry
Day, held for generations on the second Tues-
day in October to celebrate the season’s har-
vest.
The tribe still gathered wild berries this
year, although yields were down significantly
because of drought, said Cheryl Andrews-Mal-
tais, the tribe’s chairwoman.
In the wild, cranberries face some different
challenges, she said. Weeds can rob the plants
of sunlight and nutrients, and storm water
runoff can bring toxins into the bogs, which
the tribe’s natural resource department man-
ages “with a gentle touch.”
But many of the changes — hotter summers,
less rainfall, an increasing number of power-
ful storms — are common threats to farmed
and wild fruit.
When asked how the tribe might adapt to
global warming and its effects on cranberries,
Andrews-Maltais said, “Hopefully we will be
able to monitor and get ahead of it. We need to
really go back and see what today’s science
dictates and balance that with our traditional
practices and our knowledge of any natural
resource.”then perhaps nothing for weeks.
Heat waves can be especially damaging for
cranberries. When it’s 90 degrees outside, it
can be about 10 to 20 degrees hotter in the bog,
and those high temperatures can lead to a
condition called scald, where the fruit is
unable to cool itself and cooks on the vine.
Warmer conditions overall can prevent per-
ennial plants like cranberries from photosyn-
thesizing efficiently, Ghantous said.
In a kind of agricultural whiplash, cranber-
ries are threatened not only by heat but by
cold. A changing climate means cranberry
plants are budding about two weeks earlier in
the spring than they once did, making them
vulnerable to damage from frost, Mary McCaf-
frey said. And above-normal temperatures
through September stretch the harvest into
November, increasing the possibility of losing
berries to frost and preventing them from
turning from white to their characteristic red
color.
“Frost is the number one killer of hopes and
dreams,” Ward said.
Jeffrey LaFleur, a first-generation grower in
Massachusetts and vice president of coopera-
tive development and grower relations at
Ocean Spray, worries about the current
drought’s toll.
“Agriculture can be one of the most hum-
bling professions you can ever have,” LaFleur
said. “What we’re focused on is, how do you
use the technology or the engineering to work
with nature to be as productive as you can to
ensure continuity?”Deep roots
Before technology or engineering enteredBY TATIANA SCHLOSSBERG
IN EAST TAUNTON, MASS.B
illy McCaffrey trawled his hands
through the cold, clear water, creating a
small wake in the calm. Below the
surface, the flooded vines of the cranberry bog
looked like a Christmas tree garlanded with
shining red bulbs, pressed up close against a
window pane.
He pulled up a cranberry and popped it in
his mouth. The shock of sourness, which
twists and wrenches the faces of the uninitiat-
ed, barely produced a pucker.
McCaffrey, 68, and his wife, Mary, 73, have
been growing cranberries on their farm in
East Taunton for more than 30 years. “If I were
in the Carolinas, I’d be growing rice,” said
McCaffrey, who owns 12 acres of bog and also
grows hay and strawberries elsewhere on his
farm. “If I were in Hawaii, I’d be growing
pineapple, but I’m here, so I grow cranberries.
We’re holding on in Massachusetts.”
But climate change makes holding on in-
creasingly hard.
More extreme heat in summer, warmer
winters with less ice, and wild fluctuations
between heavy rain and drought are taking a
toll on cranberry plants here, where many of
the plants are 100 years old or more. Farmers
are employing new technology and altering
some traditional practices to keep alive a fruit
that dates to native tribes and has been
associated with this state since the first
Thanksgiving in Plymouth.
All farming, dependent on weather and
climate, retains some element of unpredict-
ability. But what many are seeing now is
outside the range of experience.
“There was never a ‘normal’ growing sea-
son, but there’s really no normal now,” said
Brian Wick, the executive director of the Cape
Cod Cranberry Growers’ Association, a state-
wide organization. “It’s the hottest this, and
the driest that, and that’s what we are seeing
and what the growers are tackling.”
Cranberries are the state’s second-largest
agricultural commodity, worth about $60 mil-
lion, and the industry generates more than
$1 billion for Massachusetts and about 7,000
jobs.
The growers still manage to produce about
a quarter of the nation’s cranberries. But
changes to the climate and an oversupply of
berries — causing a nearly 60 percent decline
in price over the past decade — have made it
increasingly difficult for farmers to make a
living.
While a warming planet is creating some
stress for cranberry plants, the bogs them-
selves can be helpful to the environment.
For each acre of cranberry bog, growers
preserve an average of about 5.4 acres of land
that surrounds the bog, according to Ocean
Spray, a grower-owned cooperative that repre-
sents about 700 cranberry growers in North
America, including about two-thirds of those
in Massachusetts. Those uplands and marshes
help protect biodiversity and wildlife while
the vegetation and trees capture carbon diox-
ide from the atmosphere and store it in the soil
and wood.
Beyond the immediate impacts to the state’s
approximately 375 growers, many of whom
work on bogs that their families have tended
for several generations, the fate of this small
fruit has a larger meaning for Massachusetts.
For the state’s Indigenous peoples, particu-
larly the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head
(Aquinnah), a significant decline in cranber-
ries would be a devastating blow to ancient
traditions.
“Cranberries are a big part of our cultural
identity in Massachusetts and a big part of our
scenery,” said Katherine Ghantous, a weed
scientist at the University of Massachusetts
Amherst Cranberry Station, an outreach and
research center that supports the state’s grow-
ers.
“But it’s more than just the money or the
fruit,” she said. “It’s part of who Massachusetts
is.”The fight to save a small fruit
To adapt to the changing climate, growers
are marrying old-fashioned methods with
modern technology — recycling more water
during harvest; using sensors for more effi-
cient and targeted irrigation; replacing ice-de-
pendent practices; installing solar panels at
their farms; closely monitoring frost and pests
with the help of scientists; and planting
higher-yield varieties of cranberries.
“There’s no such thing as a dumb farmer
anymore,” Billy McCaffrey said.
Iain Ward, who grows cranberries in Lake -
ville, Mass., said farmers have little choice but
to be good environmental stewards. “It doesn’t
make sense to abuse the resource; you can’t
stay in business that way,” he said. “We’re
already sustainable, to a person, but we’re not
doing it for the credit.”
Both Mary McCaffrey and Ward said other
growers are skeptical about climate change,
but the trend lines are clear: The Northeast is
warming faster than most of the country, with
Massachusetts as the fifth-fastest-warming
state in that region. This past summer there
were 14 days above 90 degrees, compared with
the usual nine or so, according to the National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
This year nearly all of Massachusetts, along
with much of the rest of New England, faces
drought conditions. East Taunton, where the
McCaffrey farm is located, is an especially
hard hit part classified as being in “ extreme
drought” conditions.
Although most growers recycle the water
they use, cranberry production requires a lot
of it — the plants need water to grow and then
bogs are flooded for the harvest.
Drier, hotter weather means more irriga-
tion, which requires more energy — usually
from electricity, propane, oil or gas.
Irrigation doesn’t replace rainfall, which is
more uniform and penetrates the soil more
evenly, Ghantous said. Even when there is no
drought, climate change is causing erratic
rainfall — a stretch of heavy downpours andCLIMATE SOLUTIONSHow climate change is complicating a Thanksgiving staple
Heat waves, drought and a lack of winter ice are taking a toll on a quintessential Massachusetts crop
PHOTOS BY ADAM GLANZMAN FOR THE WASHINGTON POSTABOVE: Billy
McCaffrey drives
his tractor
equipped with a
“Ruby Slipper” to
loosen cranberries
for harvesting last
month in his bog in
East Taunton,
Mass. RIGHT:
McCaffrey’s hands
bear the marks of
harvest. Growers
have had to marry
old-fashioned
methods with
modern technology
to adapt to climate
change.The cranberry
industry generates
more than $1 billion
for Massachusetts
and about 7,000
jobs.“There was
never a
‘normal’
growing
season, but
there’s really
no normal
now.”
Brian Wick, executive
director of the Cape
Cod Cranberry Growers’
Association