Cranberries to Alpacas The Benefits of a Farmers’ Cooperative

In the 1880s, my great grandfather, Charles W. Wilkinson, discovered that cranberries grew very well in the sandy acid soil of Southern New Jersey. The area was known as the Pine Barrens. The few indigenous inhabitants were often called Pineys. Yellow pine trees stunted in growth due to lack of soil nutrition forested the area. A few narrow rutted roads surfaced with sugar like sand and rainwater filled pothole criss crossed through this almost wild region.

Charles purchased over 200 acres at the Hampton ruins along the Batsto River, cleared trees and planted cranberry vines. He built a state-of-the-art packinghouse where his cranberries would be stored, sorted and made ready for wagon transport two miles to a railroad siding. The four-story packinghouse used wood from dismantled Philadelphia 1876 Centennial Exposition buildings and was equipped with an Otis elevator powered by a gasoline Otto single cylinder stationary engine.

The cranberry vines were planted along the Batsto River in the shallow but extensive pits remaining after bog iron was dug up during the Revolutionary War for the nearby Hampton furnace and forge. Hampton was one of many Southern New Jersey cannon ball factories supplying George Washington’s army. Hampton cannon balls likely found their way to the famous Battle of Princeton.

During the geological formation of Southern New Jersey, iron precipitated from the river water to form iron deposits in the sand riverbeds. These crusty sand-iron deposits became known as bog iron. During the Revolutionary War, towns hidden in the depths of the Pine Barrens grew up near this plentiful bog iron to smelt the iron and forge cannon balls.

The resulting shallow pits were perfect for cranberries since they could be flooded in winter to protect the evergreen cranberry vines from the cold dry winter winds. Soon, many cranberry farms sprang up in the Pine Barrens. A new industry was born!

Charles and several of his cranberry friends quickly realized the market for cranberries was not growing as fast as the annual cranberry harvest. They also realized that greater marketing success could be achieved by banding together instead of individual marketing by separate farms.

Growers Cranberry Company was formed as a farmers’ cooperative to market members’ cranberries. The cooperative’s efficiencies of scale and power of many allowed cranberries to take the Philadelphia and New York City fresh fruit markets by storm. Consumers started making more and more cranberry-orange relish, whole cranberry sauce, strained cranberry sauce and cranberry turkey stuffing.

The Southern New Jersey cranberry industry became so successful that farmers started planting cranberries in Cape Cod and parts of Wisconsin where similar sandy, acidic and low nutrition soil existed. Low nutrition apparently keeps the vines lean and the berries many.

I remember as a child my grandfather Ralph Clayberger’s (Charles’ son-in-law) lapel pin from the Growers Cranberry Company old days. The pin was the cooperative’s trademark. It was a stick man made out of large red beads. The cooperative marketed cranberries under the Eatmor Cranberries brand.

Charles died in 1932 and Growers Cranberry Company closed its doors in the 1950s. Ocean Spray Cranberries, Inc., a more vertically integrated farmers’ cooperative, now serves the industry. It manufactures and sells cranberry and other food products under the Ocean Spray brand. Profits are distributed as patronage dividends to member cranberry growers across the country.

Farmer owned agricultural cooperatives have been around for generations. A national policy supporting these cooperatives, however, did not jell until 1926 when Congress passed the Cooperative Marketing Act. Also, the Internal Revenue Code exempts farmers’ cooperative income from taxation to the extent it is distributed to members.