As global temperatures climb, New Jersey’s cranberry growers are battling extreme summer heat that threatens to cook the state’s ruby-red crops on the vine.
Every autumn from mid-September to November, South Jersey’s Pine Barrens turn crimson during the annual cranberry harvest. Farmers flood sandy bogs where the shrubby vines grow, deploying specialized machinery to knock the ripe berries loose so they float to the surface for collection.
Workers wade waist-deep through the water, guiding the fruit toward conveyor belts that load waiting trucks. According to U.S. Department of Agriculture data, New Jersey produces about $20 million worth of cranberries each year. Many of these agricultural operations are family-owned enterprises that have worked the Pine Barrens for generations.
Rising global temperatures and erratic weather patterns now jeopardize this agricultural tradition. Because New Jersey is the southernmost region for cranberry farming in the United States, local growers deal with climate shifts before others, as Shawn Cutts of Cutts Brothers explained to WHYY.
Cutts, a fifth-generation cranberry grower who has worked on his family farm since 1997, grew up hearing stories about much colder conditions in the 1970s and 1980s. Today, he faces a different reality marked by intense summer heat.
“When we get hot, dry days in the late summer, the berries can actually cook on the vines and it’ll ruin them,” Cutts told WHYY.
To prevent the crop from baking, farmworkers carry meat thermometers into the fields during the summer to probe the berries. If a thermometer reads 108 degrees Fahrenheit or higher, crews must activate overhead sprinklers to cool down the sensitive fruit.
Higher temperatures also foster ideal conditions for fruit rot, a fungal disease that can severely reduce yields. Cutts noted to WHYY that growers operating in colder regions, like Wisconsin and Quebec, do not face the same fruit rot problems as New Jersey farmers.
