United States Department of Agriculture has a cost relief program for growers to help with spending to adapt to COVID-19 safety. The application period is open until November 22, 2021. Find more information at this website.
Below are the results of the 2020 Berry Prices Survey. While a lot has happened since 2020, we hope this information is useful and it can certainly be used as a reality check– if your berries are lower than the prices you see here, please consider raising your prices.
I will forward this with one piece of advice for pricing berries for retail or U-pick customers: folks are always happy to see prices for berries go down, but raising the cost up after the season has already started is likely to raise eyebrows. Start high!
-Anya Osatuke, Western New York Berry Extension Specialist
Results from the 2020 Berry Prices Survey
By Kristen Park and Zoey Yang– Dyson School of Economics, Cornell University
This article originally appeared in the newsletter of the New York State Berry Growers Association.
Cornell’s Food Industry Management Program, with funding by the NYS Berry Growers Association, has results from the 2020 berry pricing survey for New York commercial berry growers. The survey collected 2020 price information so commercial growers can make pricing decisions for their upcoming season.
We want to thank all the growers who took the time to complete the survey. One hundred farms completed the survey. Although the number of returned surveys was down somewhat, the results are robust. The distribution of respondents according to type of production practice, conventional versus organic (Table 1), as well as berry acreage (Table 2) was very similar to the 2018 respondents, and we feel very comfortable comparing the 2020 results with the previous survey in 2018.
Table 1: Number of survey respondents, 2006 through 2018
| 2006 | 2009 | 2012 | 2018 | 2020 | |
| Total growers | 48 | 162 | 117 | 117 | 100* |
| Conventional growers | — | 157 | 97 | 87 | 79 |
| Organic growers | — | 5 | 12 | 30 | 22 |
| Counties represented | 34 | 48 | 37 | 45 | 37 |
*Does not equal conventional plus organic growers as one grower had both conventional and organic berries.
The berry farm respondents grow in 37 counties spread across the width and breadth of the state. The average berry acreage was 9 acres and the average total farm size 174 acres. The size distribution of berry acres is roughly equal to that from the 2018 survey.
Table 2. Distribution of Berry Farms by Berry Acreage
| Number of berry acres | 2018 | 2020 | 2020 |
| % distribution | number of respondents | % distribution | |
| <1 acres | 21% | 21 | 21% |
| 1 to 3 acres | 28% | 20 | 20% |
| 4 to 6 acres | 20% | 21 | 21% |
| 7 to 10 acres | 11% | 9 | 9% |
| 11 to 20 acres | 14% | 15 | 15% |
| >20 acres | 6% | 12 | 12% |
| Number of observations | 100% | 98 | 100% |
U-pick and wholesale prices for almost all berry types, the exception being blackberries, increased in 2020. Interestingly, retail prices, an average of all types of retail including farm store, farmers market, sales to retailers, and online sales, dropped from 2018. Whether the pattern of price increases in u-pick and wholesale and decrease in retail were a result of market pressures from the pandemic is uncertain.
Table 3: Average price per pound, 2018 versus 2020
| 2018 | 2020 | Difference | |
| average price | average price | ||
| Blueberries | |||
| U-pick | 2.83 | 2.89 | 0.06 |
| Wholesale | 3.44 | 3.64 | 0.20 |
| Retail | 5.41 | 5.19 | (0.22) |
| Strawberries | |||
| U-pick | 2.68 | 3.20 | 0.52 |
| Wholesale | 2.74 | 3.26 | 0.52 |
| Retail | 5.11 | 4.24 | (0.87) |
| Summer Fruiting Raspberries: | |||
| U-pick | 4.14 | 4.87 | 0.73 |
| Wholesale | 4.84 | 5.84 | 1.00 |
| Retail | 8.11 | 8.54 | 0.43 |
| Fall-Fruiting Raspberries | |||
| U-pick | 4.54 | 4.76 | 0.22 |
| Wholesale | 5.91 | 6.60 | 0.69 |
| Retail | 8.74 | 7.89 | (0.85) |
| Blackberries | |||
| U-pick | 4.69 | 5.36 | 0.67 |
| Wholesale | 5.72 | 5.43 | (0.29) |
| Retail | 7.94 | 8.05 | 0.11 |
We compared prices of conventional berries to organic berries (Table 4) and see some strong differences depending on the berry type. The u-pick prices for blueberries, strawberries, and summer raspberries were quite similar, but their wholesale prices were significantly higher.
We did not have enough fall raspberry observations or blackberry u-pick observations to report these prices.
Table 4. Prices of Conventional Berries Versus Organic Berries
| Conventional | Organic | Difference* | |
| Blueberries | |||
| U-pick | 2.83 | 3.18 | 0.35 |
| Wholesale | 3.22 | 5.02 | 1.80 |
| Retail | 5.00 | 5.97 | 0.97 |
| Strawberries | |||
| U-pick | 3.16 | 3.48 | 0.31 |
| Wholesale | 2.82 | 5.02 | 2.20 |
| Retail | 5.25 | 5.54 | 0.29 |
| Summer Fruiting Raspberries | |||
| U-pick | 4.86 | 4.90 | 0.04 |
| Wholesale | 5.47 | 6.88 | 1.41 |
| Retail | 8.13 | 10.00 | 1.87 |
| Fall-Fruiting Raspberries | |||
| U-pick | 5.10 | NA | NA |
| Wholesale | 7.00 | NA | NA |
| Retail | 8.82 | NA | NA |
| Blackberries | |||
| U-pick | 5.36 | NA | NA |
| Wholesale | 5.72 | 6.00 | 0.28 |
| Retail | 7.94 | 8.68 | 0.74 |
* Organic average price – Conventional average price
Information about sales of “other” berries was also collected; however, the number of responses from those growing these specialty berries was not large enough to report prices for each berry type. Prices were averaged across the specialty berry types and show in Table 5.
Table 5. Prices of Other Berry Types
| Other berries | 2020 average price |
| U-pick | 4.43 |
| Wholesale | NA |
| Retail | 7.69 |
NA = Insufficient responses to be able to report
We gratefully acknowledge the help from all the berry growers who participated in the survey and for the funding from the New York State Berry Growers Association that made this project possible.