USDA Research & Promotion Program

Raspberry and blackberry growers have nowhere near the marketing budgets of our strawberry and blueberry neighbors. It has also been difficult for us to invest large sums in promotions when an increasingly large percentage of our berries are being imported. We ask ourselves, “Why should we assess ourselves to market when our foreign competitors get the primary benefit?”

We sense that we need only to look towards the blueberry farmers for an answer to this dilemma. The WRRC has been researching means to set up a national order that would allow all raspberry growers to cooperate in marketing and also assess imported berries for funds to support our marketing efforts.

USDA’s Research and Promotion Program (R & P) is the only way we’ve identified to assess imported berries at the same rate we assess our own berries for both research and/or promotion. The US Highbush Blueberry Council is an example of an R & P program. Establishing an R & P program can be done with a grower vote or be established with a deferred vote within 3 years of the program’s establishment. This program estimates 12-18 months as an optimistic period for the time from the request to actual establishment of the program. Extensive public hearings and grower involvement is crucial to the establishment of the program.

The ability to assess imported raspberries to help our marketing program is a major interest of the WRRC. A R & P Program is by definition a national program so our first decision has been to decide whether the program is strictly processed berries (98% of our fruit) or both fresh and processed raspberries. At this point we believe that it is wisest to begin with only processed/frozen red raspberries but we remain open to listening to questions and concerns from fresh producers and other raspberry and blackberry growers.

A good place to start learning about R & P programs is the USDA website located at: http://www.ams.usda.gov/fv/rpb.html . We hope caneberry growers around the nation will investigate how this program might be able to help in your research and promotion plans. We’d benefit from hearing from you. Contact Tom Krugman, Development Coordinator, tomk@red-raspberry.org.