The Oregon Cranberry Difference

Once upon a time on the Oregon Coast, cranberry farming was just a piece of the livelihood puzzle. Families would share the work: While many men were off fishing for salmon, women who worked in the home would tend the cranberry crop. But just in time for harvest, salmon season would end and men and women would work on the harvest.

“If you aggregate all the labor that went into growing a pound of cranberries back in the 50s and 60s, most of the labor was done by the women, because they stayed at home. It was my grandmother that was doing the physical labor to make that happen,” says Tim Vincent, a third generation family member of Bandon, Oregon’s Vincent Family.

But as the 70s appeared on the horizon and Americans started drinking more juice, demand for the tart berries, grown largely on the east coast at the time, grew. And over the course of decades, the challenges facing cranberry farmers have changed too.

“The value of cranberries started to creep up and the opportunities for farmers increased,” Vincent said. “Farmers were able to make it a viable full time job, and in Oregon, it was partly driven because the salmon industry was becoming less of a way to make a living for a family.”
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Vincent Family Cranberries started in 1957 when Vincent’s grandfa- ther, Elmer Robison, began farming. For decades, the farm was part of the Ocean Spray co-op. As the organization changed over the years and production increased at an explosive rate, the price of cranberries dropped by 80 percent from what farmers earned in the 1980s, Vincent said. Read Full Article Here.

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