Blueberry Farms Search for Answer to Labor Problem

In 1974, emergency room doctor Paul Norris and his wife, Sandy, started farming for one reason: their daughters.

Paul Norris, Norris Blueberry Farms, Roseburg, Oregon: “I wanted them to be able to be fairly self-sufficient: how to repair things, how to fix things. I just don’t think -  raising them in the city, they are missing some experiences they need.”

Once the family’s farm in southern Oregon’s Umpqua Valley was established with grazing livestock, sugar beets and alfalfa, Paul Norris wanted to try something new. An extension agent told him, however, that his plan to add five acres of blueberries wouldn’t pan out.

Paul Norris, Norris Blueberry Farms, Roseburg, Oregon: “It was kind of like waving a red flag in front of a bull. Now we have a pretty significant planting of blueberries.”

That “significant planting” is now about 700 acres of blueberries. That scale allowed the farm to eventually become a direct exporter of the fruit, first to Japan and later elsewhere in Asia and to Canada. 

Oregon producers together now raise 165 million pounds of cultivated blueberries, second only to Washington.

Paul Norris, Norris Blueberry Farms, Roseburg, Oregon: “We got into it kind of in the infancy and it’s been fun to develop the program. We helped fund some of the initial research on the antioxidant aspects of blueberries and it’s fun to see the popularity grow.”

When his daughter, Ellie Norris, joined the family business full-time in 2014, she found she loved the challenge of helping run a farm. But she soon faced a key problem in an otherwise healthy industry: labor.

Ellie Norris, Norris Blueberry Farms, Roseburg, Oregon: “We only do hand harvest right now. We are, I think, one of the last dinosaurs that only do hand harvest.”

The family felt that hand harvesting was important because they primarily sell fresh - versus frozen - blueberries. Quality is more difficult to preserve with fresh. Their customers, including those in the growing market of South Korea, expect large, unblemished blueberries.

Ellie Norris, Norris Blueberry Farms, Roseburg, Oregon: “They do get bruising if they hit something with a certain amount of force. It’s more than you realize. They look okay but there is going to be bruising under the skin and that will cause the fruit to decay faster.”

And although machine harvesters do exist, the family has moved cautiously, watching as the equipment that works nicely for berries that will be frozen are gradually improved for fresh blueberries.

Ellie Norris, Norris Blueberry Farms, Roseburg, Oregon: “We, for the first time, this season we brought in a team with a machine to harvest for fresh. And I was impressed with the quality that came out of that. It is something that we are dipping our toes into. It’s not something that we are going to jump head first into.”

But the cost of labor - Norris Farms pays a minimum of about $18 an hour - and the availability of workers is a growing concern. Additionally, Oregon now requires overtime pay for farm workers if hours exceed 48 per week. That will drop to 40 hours by 2027. The family hires 450 workers to pick from June through September, with another 130 working in their processing center.

Ellie Norris, Norris Blueberry Farms, Roseburg, Oregon: “If I told you how expensive it is to have hand harvest, I think your hair would fall out…That is a large bill to pay and it’s only going to get more expensive.”

About 160 miles to the north, on the outskirts of Portland, Oregon State horticulture professor Wei Yang is developing a blueberry tree at the school’s North Willamette Research and Extension Center. Most blueberries are naturally a bush.

Yang is grafting the root stock of a variety of wild blueberry called sparkleberry onto the northern highbush variety that Oregon farms such as Norris Farms grows.

Wei Yang, Professor of Horticulture, Oregon State University: “You are switching from bush type to a tree type… It’s much easier to manage: harvesting wise, weed control, nutritionally, irrigation. It will be completely a different system….If you are using machine harvesting for fresh operations, it could benefit the operation.”

The goal? To allow machine harvesters to more effectively capture blueberries by encircling a single trunk rather than multiple stems, which means fewer berries lost on the ground.

Wei Yang, Professor of Horticulture, Oregon State University: “Currently, with the regular bush, you will be losing up to 25 percent. With better designed, better production systems, trimming, hopefully we can reduce that, you know, to no more than 10 percent, which is comparable to hand harvesting.”

The University of Florida has worked with Yang in recent years to also test southern highbush blueberries as a “tree.” Yang says a plant that works more smoothly with machines could help solve the labor problem and keep U.S. fresh berry growers competitive.

Wei Yang, Professor of Horticulture, Oregon State University: “The cost of labor, harvesting labor is increasing every year. And also the competition from foreign countries, especially blueberry-producing countries like Peru in recent years. We have to be looking at our harvesting costs.”

Yang is working to help manufacturers find the ideal design that also works for fresh.

Wei Yang, Professor of Horticulture, Oregon State University: “We are still using the same machine but we want to improve the machine so it’s causing less bruising so it can store longer.”

Ellie Norris says she saw promising enough results this year that, in light of the cost of labor, the farm will try machine harvesting again next year.

Ellie Norris, Norris Blueberry Farms, Roseburg, Oregon: “It’s penciling out now. Like every farmer will tell you, it’s getting more and more narrow. You are getting squeezed on this side and on this side…something's gotta give.”

By Colleen Bradford Krantz, colleen.krantz@iowapbs.org