Are field-grown, cross-pollinated, sprayed and mechanically picked blueberries really ‘wild’?
PAMELA CUTHBERT | September 10, 2007 |
All wild blueberries are not created equal. For one, take their “untamed” habitats. In Ontario, the little indigo-stained fruits are at the heart of a fleeting summer cottage industry, hand-raked on forest floors or rocky beds and brought fresh to market by gatherers. But in the wild blueberry belt, which runs from Quebec through Eastern Canada and down into Maine, the picture is generally less sauvage: the same species of the pea-sized berry is cultivated on vast, cleared fields, cross-pollinated with the help of imported bees, sprayed with chemicals when necessary, mechanically harvested to an average yield of 80,000 tonnes a year, frozen and then, for the most part, exported.
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