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The Berry Boom

Americans Are Eating a Lot More Berries. Here’s Why.

Raspberries aren’t in season right now. But if you’ll be eating them during the holidays anyway, you won’t be alone.

According to statistics published by the United States Department of Agriculture, per capita consumption of fresh raspberries grew 475 percent from 2000 to 2012, the most recent year for which data are available. Blueberry consumption is up 411 percent, and strawberries are up 60 percent.

Before you pat yourself on the back for your healthy eating habits, you should know you’re probably not eating a lot more fresh fruit in total: The latest reading is 48 pounds per person per year, up just 1 percent since 2000.

But if you compare apples and oranges, you’ll find we now eat 9 percent less of each, and 11 percent fewer bananas. The decline in those three mainstays, which still account for 49 percent of the fresh fruit we eat, has made room in our diets for more berries, pineapples (up 99 percent), mangoes (up 42 percent), papayas (up 41 percent), tangerines (up 40 percent), lemons (up 56 percent) and avocados (up 139 percent), which, yes, the agriculture department says are fruit.

When I set out to report this article, I expected it to be mainly about changing tastes: apples becoming less appealing, and pineapples more popular. But consistently, industry participants told me the main factors changing what fruits we eat are on the supply side. If people are eating more of some kind of fruit, it’s probably because farmers have figured out how to deliver more of it, at higher quality, throughout the year.

Of course, there is the “superfood” factor: Both raspberries and blueberries have been praised for their nutrient value. But Chris Romano, who leads global produce procurement for Whole Foods, attributes the boom in berries largely to taste and availability.

“Techniques in growing raspberries, blueberries and blackberries have gotten much better over the last 15 years,” he said. Growers are planting better breeds of berry, with higher sugar content; they’re using pruning and growing techniques that extend the season, including growing berries inside greenhouse-like structures called tunnels that retain heat; and most important, they’re growing berries in places they didn’t used to, where production is possible at different times of year.

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Harvesting blackberries in Nipomo, Calif. Tony Chavez, not pictured, a berry farmer in Nipomo, said, “I can grow berries here because of the weather when nobody else can.”Credit...Brian P. Hall for The New York Times

Historically, blueberries needed to be grown in regions that get cold weather for part of the year, because rising temperatures bring the plants out of dormancy. But newer “low-chill” blueberry varieties have helped make berries available all year by expanding production to formerly inappropriate areas like coastal California. That helps make more berries available in months like November.

“I can grow berries here because of the weather when nobody else can,” said Tony Chavez, a berry farmer in Nipomo, 70 miles up the coast from Santa Barbara. Right now, he’s harvesting organic blueberries and selling them at $40 for a 3.3-pound box; in July, at the peak of the blueberry harvest, such a box would most likely fetch only $12. Fifteen years ago, it’s unlikely anyone would have grown blueberries in Nipomo; Mr. Chavez’s farm is called Rancho Don Antonio because, when he bought it, it was a cattle ranch.

With pineapples and papayas, the story is similarly about improved quality and improved availability throughout the year.

“Fresh pineapple is pretty much available year round, and that wasn’t the case before,” said Eric Stone, the senior produce merchant at FreshDirect, the New York grocer. He offered particular praise for pineapples currently coming out of Hawaii, and for the champagne mango, from Mexico.

Remember this the next time you hear “local, seasonal” is all the rage. We’re in the midst of a berry boom that has been made possible by farmers shipping berries all year, from whatever part of the hemisphere is the best place to produce them at that moment, to wherever consumers feel like having a fruit salad.

I don’t mean just shipments from California to the East Coast. Fifty percent of blueberries and 58 percent of raspberries consumed in the United States are imported, typically from Central and South America. California-based Family Tree Farms spreads its production across the calendar by also growing them in Mexico and Peru, which allows the company to deliver berries mostly during the late winter, spring and fall. Many other domestic producers cover the summer, and Chilean and Argentine farmers grow blueberries for our winter.

Rising avocado consumption is another decidedly nonlocal trend; nearly all of the last 15 years’ growth is attributable to imports from Mexico. Mr. Stone says one reason sales are up is that producers have gotten better at delivering them just ripe, so consumers don’t have to leave them on the counter for three days before eating them. Mr. Romano of Whole Foods credits policy changes that eased the way for Mexican imports, and the rising popularity of Mexican food.

One data point in favor of that last theory: Over the same period that avocado sales rose 139 percent, limes were up 83 percent.

The Upshot provides news, analysis and graphics about politics, policy and everyday life. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter. Sign up for our weekly newsletter here.

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