Strawberry glut jams up prices (with photo gallery)

Some of the strawberries Crestview resident Sport Middlebrooks, 3, pulled out of a Baker field were bigger than his small fist.

“He just loves it,” Sport’s mother, Janeil Middlebrooks, said. “This is our second year doing this.”

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No matter if you prefer fresh-picked strawberries or like the convenience of the grocery isle, it’s a good year for lovers of the berry.

Strawberries from Florida and California flooded the market at the same time this year, driving prices down to $1.25 a pound in some local stores, compared to $3.49 a pound during the same time last year.

The reason? Cooler than normal temperatures delayed the strawberry crop in Florida.

Florida is the nation’s biggest strawberry producer in January and February, while California is the largest in the spring. This year the harvests in both states ripened at the same time.

At Akers of Strawberries in Baker, where Sport filled his basket, the first strawberries weren’t harvested until the Friday before Easter, almost a month later than normal, employee Dorothy Brooks said. Now, Florida growers are experiencing a bumper harvest.

“This is the best crop we’ve had in years,” Brooks said.

Down the road, at Brooks Farm, Tana Brooks agreed.

“They are bigger and sweeter this year,” Tana Brooks said. “They are twice the size of the ones we picked last year.”

In south Florida some growers plowed under their fields because of the low prices, which prevented them from earning enough to pay for labor, packaging, trucking and cooling the berries.

Florida’s largest strawberry producer, Gary Wishnatzki, 54, allowed people to pick strawberries from his Plant City fields for free rather than let them die in the fields.

“It was like a perfect storm that developed this year,” Wishnatzki said. “The events of this season were totally unprecedented.”

Unlike larger strawberry producers that sell to large grocery stores, most of north Okaloosa County’s growers run small-scale operations that sell to directly to the public. Their prices aren’t impacted by the glut on the market, said Gerald Edmondson, director of the Okaloosa County Extension office in Crestview.

At Akers of Strawberries 10-acre field, people can pick their own strawberries for $1.25 a pound. At $3.50 a quart, it’s higher if employees pick the berries.

And while, the price for picked berries is higher at Akers than in grocery stores, that didn’t stop Crestview resident Kathy McDaniel from paying the extra price.

“I just prefer mine fresh picked,” McDaniel said. “They are a much better quality than those that have been shipped.”

Despite the bumper crop, the growing season for Florida strawberries could be shortened as strawberries won’t do as well in the looming warmer weather, Edmondson said.

Once Florida’s crop is depleted, prices will go back up. Until then, good deals will be the norm.

Publix Super Markets Inc. met with Florida growers recently and agreed to aggressively market their strawberries with special sales in the coming weeks, corporate spokeswoman Shannon Patten said.

“Everybody wins,” Patten said. “The local economy gets rejuvenated by helping local growers. Customers win because they get a great quality product at an unbelievable price.”

AP writer Tamara Lush contributed to this article.