Trouble has arrived by the bog-ful in Wisconsin's cranberry country.
Supplies of the bright red fruit have trounced demand, sending prices paid to independent growers falling to levels not seen in more than a decade, industry watchers say.
Prices paid to growers have a huge impact in Wisconsin, where more than half of the world's cranberries are grown. The annual value of the harvest in the state is $175 million to $200 million, according to the Wisconsin State Cranberry Growers Association.
"It's the worst time I've ever seen in the cranberry industry," said Kurt Rutlin, president of the Wisconsin Rapids-based Wisconsin Cranberry Cooperative and a second-generation cranberry grower. "It's truly disheartening."
Right now there are simply too many cranberries on the market.
As of late November, cranberries were fetching as little as $10 per hundred pounds. But it costs at least $25 to produce that much, and many independent growers are losing money on every piece of fruit they harvest.
Growers are falling victim to their own success, having produced bumper crops in recent years.
"The crops continue to grow bigger. The inventories continue to climb," Rutlin said. "There's enough fruit in the marketplace right now to last us through next year if we did not grow a single berry" in 2014.
