Colin Fain, CEO of Agronometrics, emphasized the collaborative nature of the blueberry industry and the potential of machine harvesting during a recent discussion on the International Blueberry Organization (IBO) report.

Agronometrics, a market intelligence company, plays a key role in compiling the IBO report, a comprehensive 230-page analysis that provides vital data for the blueberry industry.

"What we do in Agronometrics is go out and source that data, that can be from governments, and bring this all together, standardize it and unify it in a data set that we can use for the bigger report," Fain explains. "For the IBO report, one of the most important sources was IBO members themselves."

The report, Fain noted, reflects the strength of collaboration within the blueberry market, a level of openness that is rare in other industries.

"Everybody contributes to it," he adds. "I think blueberries are very special that way, my theory is that the participants that were brought up in this industry saw the value in open communication and sharing information, so you have an industry that's willing to talk to each other." 

Fain says there is valuable information available in the report for everyone in the supply chain, but a subject that piqued his interest is the investments Peruvians are making in planting new varieties and replanting varietals that are only five years old.

"It's really impressive, particularly in the face of how many other regions are having a hard time making the investment to switch varieties or modernize," he explains. "Peru has been leading the way, not only in production but they're doubling down on quality as well."

All this is to avoid what happened in 2023, when the country's warmer temperatures due to El Niño climate event, led to a 23% reduction in exports compared to the previous season. Blueberry average global prices reached an unprecedented high of $7.01, a level never seen before.

Fain says Peru is setting the pace, and many other parts of the world will have to catch up to bring their production up to par.

Looking to the future, the CEO believes the biggest change on the horizon for the industry is machine harvesting, and whether it will ever reach full industrial scale. He explains that technological advances will bring massive changes to the industry because they will reduce the labor components of harvesting blueberries. 

This would mean that growers would get to produce a fruit that's much more competitive with other categories, such as strawberries. Blueberries, especially high-quality varieties, must be handpicked, which is very time-consuming

"If mechanical harvesting comes to the market, you can have the machines just running, and don't need an entire team of pickers to pick a field," Fain says. "You would just have a machine that goes up and down without people, and if they're able to take much larger volumes than an individual person can, the math on that works out real quick."

However, machine harvesting is not yet ready for scale. Producers can lose a significant percentage of production if the fruit gets bruised or damaged when it lands on the platform, which is currently the case. There's also the issue of the fruit being picked before ripening. 

But there's hope. Fain says that there are some trials showing success with specific varieties bred for machine picking, which seem to be more successful in Northern high bushes compared to Southern high bushes. This, he explains, could benefit colder regions like the United States, Canada, and Germany, unlike Peru and Mexico, which have led the growth for the past couple of years.

Fain has really big hopes for the machinery's impact in the blueberry industry. If achieved, this means that the availability of blueberries will widen.

"I'd like to think that blueberries will eventually be as common as strawberries, and high-quality blueberries at that," Fain adds. "If we're able to pull that off, you can imagine the industry growing at four times the speed of what it currently is."