Faced with an influx of cranberries from Wisconsin and Quebec, agriculture officials have made a series of recommendations they hope will revitalize the 200-year-old Massachusetts cranberry industry and allow it to remain competitive. In a report to lawmakers, the Massachusetts Cranberry Revitalization Task Force, created by the Legislature in 2015, identified possible areas of innovation in cranberry farming, such as making renewable energy options more viable for growers and doing more to conserve water. The report also highlights the need for funding for cranberry farmers to renovate their bogs to be able to grow "larger, higher-yield fruits" that have become a growing chunk of the cranberry market. "Cranberry growers in Massachusetts as a whole are not confronted by a single problem," the task force wrote in its report. "The external challenges, be they a lack of capital, production costs per barrel increasing while crop values decrease, less productive bogs and other issues, are onerous."
Massachusetts, which accounts for 31 percent of American cranberry acreage, trails only Wisconsin in terms of cranberry production in the United States. But in 2014, the task force said, Quebec eclipsed Massachusetts and produced about 500,000 more barrels of the tart fruit than the Bay State.