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Blueberries have grown wild in Maine for 10,000 years. These aren't your typical grocery store blueberries. They're smaller, sweeter, and healthier. They're the backbone of a valuable industry in Maine, especially for Indigenous groups who've returned for generations to hand-harvest the fields. But in 2025, wild blueberry farmers in Maine experienced one of the worst seasons this decade, losing $28 million. So what happened? And how are farmers, processors, and scientists racing to save their ancestral wild blueberry?
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00:00Maine produces 99% of the wild blueberries in the U.S.
00:06They're sweeter and healthier than ordinary blueberries,
00:09giving them superfood status.
00:12And they bring in $360 million for the state
00:16and support more than 2,000 jobs.
00:18But now, this entire industry is under pressure.
00:2390% of Maine's wild blueberries
00:25are scooped up by Canadian-built machines,
00:28which soared in price because of tariffs on steel and aluminum.
00:32Not only were parts more expensive,
00:35but for a while they couldn't get any parts.
00:38To make matters worse,
00:40a drought last year led to one of the worst harvests this decade.
00:44The berries are burnt on the stem already.
00:47Shriveled up.
00:50That's hitting indigenous communities like the Passamaquoddy especially hard.
00:54They've been hand raking the berries here for generations.
01:00Today, just a few remote communities are keeping the dying tradition of hand harvesting alive.
01:06Both of us would make more money doing our other jobs at home.
01:10But we do this because it's like a family.
01:15We went to down east Maine to see how pickers, processors, and scientists are racing to save a berry
01:21that's grown wild here for 10,000 years.
01:28This is an ordinary cultivated blueberry, the cheaper kind you find in the grocery store.
01:34They come from a species called northern highbush, bred by scientists in the early 1900s to last longer and be
01:41larger.
01:43Wild blueberries are smaller, often pricier, and pack more fiber in twice the antioxidant punch of cultivated ones.
01:52They also spoil more quickly, so processors like Wyman's, which supplies Walmart and Whole Foods, have to get them from
01:59the fields within a few hours.
02:01These bins are holding 250 to 300 pounds of fruit.
02:05In one bin, the weight of the fruit will start to crush itself a bit.
02:09There's going to be juice running in places, and so it's just a perfect breeding ground for things that we
02:14don't want, such as yeast or malt.
02:20On a good day, we're packing 1.3 million pounds in the 21 hours that we process.
02:27This robot dumps the fruit onto the line, while this winnowing table removes light debris like leaves and sticks.
02:35Then they'll go through the initial path of the first water bath to get all the sediment off the berries.
02:41Then the berries go to a flotation tank.
02:44Ones that are underripe will float off and get composted.
02:48A lot of times, if you overwater a berry, they'll create an air pocket in the center, and that's what
02:53also creates a berry to float off.
02:55Adam West would know. He's worked here for 24 years.
02:59So I'm the fourth generation here at Wyman's.
03:01My great-grandfather worked here back in the 60s.
03:04My grandfather worked here in the late 90s.
03:08You're the kid who's going to come through next?
03:11No, I don't currently at this time. I stopped the bloodline.
03:16The sweeter, ripe berries sink and head to sanitizing.
03:20Then they're frozen in this tunnel, set at negative 28 degrees Fahrenheit.
03:27Because wild blueberries have such a short shelf life, only a tiny amount is eaten fresh.
03:3399% are shipped out frozen.
03:36Finally, this machine bags them up.
03:39But in 2025, Wyman's receiving hall was a lot emptier than usual.
03:44On a normal year, we'd have about 500,000 pounds on the floor.
03:47Currently, right now, we've got about 100,000 pounds on the floor.
03:51That's because they're completely at the whim of a rapidly changing climate.
03:56Unlike most American fruits, which have been bred for things like drought resistance, consistent look, and shelf life,
04:03wild blueberries grow naturally.
04:05They're completely untouched by modern breeding.
04:08None of these fields are planted.
04:11Many of them have been here for hundreds and hundreds of years.
04:16Over time, the wild blueberry shrubs have evolved and diversified.
04:20Now there can be 1,500 unique plants in one field, creating a patchwork of colors, shapes, and sizes.
04:29They grow in two-year cycles in these fields, called barrens.
04:35The soil is so acidic and sandy that not much else can grow here.
04:39Although the roots are hardy enough to thrive in these conditions, the berries are sensitive.
04:44Farmers have only one chance to clear this field during harvest season.
04:49And all these unique plants ripen at different times.
04:54We have to acknowledge that there are going to be some fruits that are still green and some fruits that
04:58might be overripe when we go in.
04:59We're kind of managing to the average.
05:02For most of history, people handpicked these berries.
05:06The Passamaquoddy Wild Blueberry Company, one of the largest tribe-owned farms in America, employs 150 hand harvesters.
05:16It's pretty hard, especially, you know, when you don't have much of your meniscus left.
05:23And now I have like two knee braces, a back brace, two wrist braces.
05:28I'm like half man, half brace.
05:34Jim Young has been harvesting these barrens for the last 50 years.
05:53Rakers like Jim come from across Maine and eastern Canada for the month-long season, usually beginning in late July.
05:59I drive a school bus when I'm down here.
06:02I mean, it's a lot different than driving a school bus.
06:06The Passamaquoddy Wild Blueberry Company pays each picker $2.75 a box.
06:12A good raker can fill 120 of them a day, which comes out to $330.
06:18But this is a dying art form.
06:21All of the state's wild berries used to be harvested this way.
06:24Now, only 10% are.
06:28You think some gadgets will be gone?
06:30It's going to be replaced by machinery?
06:35Today, hand harvesters largely operate where it's too hilly or rocky for big machines.
06:41A million-dollar tractor tumbling down the hillside.
06:45That doesn't work very well.
06:48Over in the flatter areas, machines scoop up berries by the row.
06:52Most of these mechanical harvesters, and their parts, come from Canada.
06:58But in June 2025, the Trump administration imposed 50% tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum, right before the start
07:07of the wild blueberries season.
07:08We rely on very few manufacturers for the equipment we need, and that makes us particularly vulnerable.
07:16That's Eric Venturini, the executive director of the Wild Blueberry Commission of Maine.
07:21For a while, they couldn't get any parts.
07:25Manufacturers just decided they weren't going to ship them at all.
07:28If that machine breaks down during the season, you're out of luck.
07:32Rising input prices and weather drove production costs up 50% from 2023 to 2025.
07:38Even as prices for wild blueberries were flat to declining over the same period of time, and so that means
07:46the margin is zero to negative.
07:50In late 2025, Senator Susan Collins asked the Trump administration for emergency funding.
07:56To my knowledge, there has not been any response, unfortunately, to the letter about tariffs specifically.
08:02This came during one of the worst wild blueberry harvests in the last decade.
08:08During pollination season in the spring, rainfall nearly quadrupled from the year before, so bees didn't visit the blueberry plants
08:16as often.
08:18They're very dramatic. They don't like to go out in the rain. They don't like to go out if it's
08:22too windy or if it's too cold.
08:24But the worst thing to hit Mainers in 2025? Drought during the harvest season.
08:30The berries usually need an inch of rain a week.
08:33We've had just under a tenth in three weeks.
08:36The plants became crunchy overnight, like you'd put them in the oven for too long.
08:41Unlike most crops, which have a harvest season in the southern hemisphere to fall back on, wild blueberries are only
08:47picked in the northeast of the U.S. and eastern Canada.
08:50So we get what we get one time a year in terms of the fruit that we're going to have
08:54available to sell for the next 12 months.
08:56This is why Wyman's processed fewer berries than normal in 2025. And it wasn't alone.
09:03In a good year, Maine can harvest 100 million pounds. But in 2025, the state brought in just over half
09:10that, and farmers lost a combined $28 million.
09:14There's only so many years in a row that a producer can lose money.
09:18Every year, Maine loses 8% of its wild blueberry acreage.
09:23We are seeing people leave the industry.
09:26Shrinking farmland is hitting communities like the Wabanaki Confederacy hard.
09:33These indigenous harvesters have hand-raked these fields for generations.
09:38During the season, they live in camps out on the Barrens.
09:42The Passamaquoddy Wild Blueberry Company, which owns the camp, once ran five of these harvesting communities.
09:49Today, it's down to two. And it's remote up here.
09:55So this is where kids like to hang out. This is where you can get good signal.
09:59Stephanie Bailey, who oversees the camp, showed us inside her cabin.
10:03We have a wall up in here, so we're lucky.
10:07Complete with a small kitchen.
10:09My husband built a little shelf in here, so I can have a little stove.
10:14So I guess my cabin would be a little bougie.
10:18I always tell the campers, if you need anything, like come and see me if it's sugar, anything.
10:25There's no running water in the cabins.
10:27This is my little bowl for washing my hands.
10:31And there's no AC, so Stephanie brings her own.
10:34We got the blanket door.
10:36Yeah, so the AC actually helps big time.
10:39Mine's probably the most, like, homey because I bring my grandsons with me too.
10:44The campground has a communal kitchen.
10:47When we do the potlucks on Thursday, yeah, everybody will be cooking.
10:50A dining hall.
10:52So they had a birthday party in here last night.
10:55Showers, bathrooms, and a laundry room.
10:58It's a home away from home.
10:59At home, people are more sheltered, and they use their devices, and they're on their TVs,
11:05and they don't visit each other anymore.
11:06Like, when I was little, everybody visited everybody.
11:09So this reminds me of being little.
11:11It's like nostalgia.
11:12Despite the heat and the hard work, the community spirit of this camp draws people back season after season.
11:20Our relatives, Mi'kmaq relatives, they come every year, so we get to see people every year.
11:25And this is Priscilla and her family.
11:27They've been coming to the Barons for over 30 years.
11:30And this is Donna.
11:32Donna helps me with cleaning.
11:34Oh, there she is.
11:35We heard you have the second-best cabin.
11:38Yes, she does.
11:40Hers is bougie, too.
11:44This is MJ.
11:46How long have you been coming out here?
11:48Since I've been two years old.
11:50And I'm 45.
11:53Almost everyone in this camp is indigenous, and berries have been vital to their tribes for millennia.
11:59They were a staple food of the Wabanaki Confederacy, of which the Passamaquoddy tribe belongs.
12:05They ate wild blueberries fresh, in porridge, or dried in the winter.
12:09The Wabanaki ground them into a natural dye for textiles and woven sweetgrass.
12:15And used the berries and roots as medicine.
12:19They were the first to do controlled burnings on blueberry crops, to prune the shrubs and kill pests and weeds.
12:25The fruit is so important, that to this day, young girls coming of age will go on a berry fast,
12:32as a sacrifice to the earth.
12:34We're earth people.
12:35Passamaquoddy.
12:36Meskutamukad.
12:37Mi'kma'u.
12:39We're all related, like our languages will sound similar.
12:43All a big family.
12:44We don't know each other, you're still family.
12:47Even though it's hot and sweaty and whatever, it's still, it's just a good time.
12:52It's everyone's heart.
12:55Basically, yeah.
12:57Doesn't matter what color or tribe or culture or anything.
13:02Doesn't matter how you're shaped, like me, I don't mind.
13:09David Stess started raking here in the 1980s and fell in love with the community around hand harvesting.
13:15He's spent the last 38 years taking pictures of life out here on the Barrens.
13:20See what I'm saying.
13:22There we go.
13:26Yeah, that was my first crew.
13:29He keeps many of his prints in his cabin.
13:32He was the top raker on the crew.
13:34Probably 89 or 90 or 91.
13:38David lives three doors down from Stephanie.
13:40He's witnessed the shift in who shows up to harvest.
13:44From young white punks in the 90s.
13:47It was pretty wild back in the day.
13:50To Latino communities from Ecuador and Guatemala today.
13:53And here's Javier and his family.
13:58But indigenous pickers have always returned.
14:01Native family, Mi'kmaq family.
14:03That was my old crew.
14:06And there aren't many bodies of work that really have this kind of depth.
14:11I mean, it's real, it's kind of, let's be honest, it's sort of insane.
14:16Decades and, you know, shot from the inside.
14:19And it is, I think, a good slice of what this world was like, you know, that's now vanished.
14:27David started coming when most of the barons were still being hand harvested.
14:32Thousands of people like him would move here just to work the wild blueberry season.
14:37Washington County is a very poor county.
14:40So it was this incredible injection of, you know, hundreds of thousands, millions of dollars that people were spending here.
14:49And that's all really gone.
14:52Just the whole hand-done culture, their hand raking.
14:57The machines have just taken that world away.
15:04And that's what I love about the Native community.
15:08They're really trying to hold on to that.
15:10David is one of the few white people on this raking crew.
15:13But he seems to fit right in.
15:15We're playing Manhunt.
15:16Uh oh.
15:17It's an extreme round.
15:19An extreme round, yeah.
15:21What's on our face?
15:23Oh, blueberry leaves.
15:24Wait, is there a picture of me?
15:26These are from the 1990s.
15:28The 90s and 2000s.
15:29And then this is David.
15:31Yeah, it's me.
15:32Can you see the resemblance?
15:33The resemblance, yeah.
15:34The top.
15:36The top.
15:37Yes, the top's a goner.
15:38Unfortunately, Mother Nature said you'll be losing that hair.
15:51A few years ago, the Passamaquoddy used the revenue from wild blueberries to buy a garbage truck.
15:56But for centuries, they didn't own their ancestral barons.
16:02In the 1500s, European colonizers began systematically removing Wabanaki people from this land.
16:09Their populations plummeted 96 percent due to warfare and disease.
16:15Colonizers put out decrees for scout bounties and forced many tribe members onto reservations such as these.
16:23They kidnapped Wabanaki children and sent them to residential schools where they were stripped of their culture and identity.
16:33It wasn't until the 1860s, during the Civil War, that the commercial harvest of wild blueberries began to supply Union
16:41soldiers with nutrient-dense canned berries.
16:44Jasper Wyman started out canning sardines in 1874, but saw a big opportunity in the wild blueberries growing on his
16:52land.
16:52He founded Wyman's, one of the largest packers in the industry.
16:56Blueberry companies would hire the Wabanaki people to harvest these barons by hand.
17:03More than a century later, under the Maine Indian Claims Settlement Act, the Passamaquoddy, along with two other Wabanaki tribes,
17:11received more than $80 million for repayment of their stolen land.
17:16Using that money, the Passamaquoddy purchased 2,000 acres of their wild blueberry barons back.
17:22It was only a fraction of the land that had originally been taken from them, but they vowed to reinvest
17:28profits from the fruit back into the tribe.
17:32And to make this money go further, the Passamaquoddy Wild Blueberry Company introduced its own brand of freeze-dried and
17:39frozen wild berries in 2021.
17:43They've also launched partnerships with wineries, a hot sauce brand, and a Worcestershire sauce company.
17:49Michael Luther King used to say, I want to buy food from the grocery store.
17:56But Malcolm Elk said, I want to sell you the food from the grocery store.
18:01And same with this, huh?
18:03The natives used to pick it, but now they own it, huh?
18:05And they're selling it.
18:07And it's just, things are getting better, I think.
18:13As harvest gets smaller, other companies like Wyman's are diversifying too, and now sells bags of mixed fruit and protein
18:20blends.
18:21Wild blueberries make up more than half of its branded business.
18:26Wyman's has also turned to researchers at the University of Maine to help arm wild blueberries for a more volatile
18:32future.
18:34So, we are doing a lot of things, as you can see here.
18:39PhD student, Ali Bello, hails from Nigeria.
18:43When I came here, I didn't know anything about wild blueberries, because wild blueberries is something that we don't have
18:49in West Africa.
18:52I'm always someone who likes to work or to do research on something that will have a positive impact of
18:59local farmers.
19:02He's researching how wild blueberries might adapt to warming temperatures.
19:06And he's using these plots to mimic an especially hot and dry year.
19:12By the end of the century, temperature is projected to increase by three to five degrees Celsius.
19:19So, as you are seeing here, we use this heating loop.
19:23You can touch it here now, it is very hot.
19:27Ali and his team test the leaves with this device to see how stressed a plant is in the heat.
19:34Here it says the balu is 0.18.
19:37Any balu below 0.5 can be considered a bad number.
19:43They are experiencing drought stress.
19:45A lot of plants have died because they are experiencing high temperature and low precipitation amount.
19:53From what we are seeing so far, it is actually not that bad as long as wild blueberries will receive
19:59resources like water.
20:03The problem is climate projections say wild blueberries will only get enough rain during one out of every five harvests
20:10going forward.
20:12And only a third of the state's barrens have irrigation.
20:16Just like a little bit scary because as you can see here, some of the wild blueberries, they are not
20:23doing well.
20:24Honestly, it is something that I'm so much worried about.
20:28Maine has plenty of water for irrigation.
20:31The problem is it takes years to build out the sprinkler systems and can cost $4,600 an acre.
20:39The Passamaquoddy estimate it will cost $4.5 million to irrigate the rest of their barrens.
20:46Two years ago, wild blueberry farmers were set to get some help.
20:50$15.5 million in emergency funding from the U.S. Department of Agriculture earmarked for irrigation.
20:57It was the first step. It was a massive, massive step.
21:02That funding would have started our build of resiliency.
21:07In spring 2025, the Trump administration moved to freeze some federal funds to Maine during a dispute over the state's
21:14policies on transgender athletes.
21:17That money would have gone a long ways.
21:19This was an especially heavy blow to the industry.
21:22Because scientists here can't breed a more drought-resistant berry.
21:27But they can leverage one key advantage.
21:30A lot of genetic diversity.
21:37Plants in these plots are doing better compared to these ones.
21:41Why?
21:43Some of them are more drought-resilient compared to others.
21:48Researchers at the Wyman Center are also observing bee behavior to see if there's a specific wild blueberry plant the
21:54pollinators like more.
21:55And they're looking into the root systems to see if a special fungus can help the plants take in more
22:00water during drought.
22:01So that we can mitigate the challenges that Mother Nature throws at us.
22:06So that's really step one.
22:08But in order to implement any of these learnings, the industry needs more money.
22:13Eric's organization, the Wild Blueberry Commission of Maine, plans to give out $1.3 million in emergency funding to growers
22:20across the state.
22:22But he says it's not enough.
22:24Especially if the industry is going to tackle irrigating the rest of the Barrens.
22:28Access to capital is a massive piece of it.
22:31I know that the federal emergency funding is going to take, you know, much longer probably.
22:36A solution couldn't come soon enough because demand for wild blueberries is on the rise in the U.S.
22:43Thanks to their superfood status.
22:46Once you try them, what we find is people stick with us.
22:50More and more people are finding them in the freezer aisle.
22:53We don't have Super Bowl level advertising budgets, so it's word of mouth.
22:58But while some people are just now discovering wild blueberries, they're nothing new to the generations of Wabanaki families who've
23:05returned to the Barrens every August.
23:08Both of us would make more money doing our other jobs at home, but we do this because it's like
23:14a family.
23:15We've been around for 151 years and we've seen these things before.
23:19It's something we'll get through.
23:39We've been around for about 25 years.
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