‘It is a crisis’: N.J. cranberry farms struggle amid worst drought they’ve ever seen

Generations of the Lee family gathered this fall, as they have every year since 1868, to harvest cranberries at the Lee Brothers Farm in Chatsworth, Burlington County.

Stephen V. Lee III, 78, has farmed the fruit for decades. He walked Thursday on the sand road of a bog filled with scarlet berries that bobbed at the water’s surface.

Workers, including family members, stood hip deep in the water, raking berries toward a submerged vacuum that sucked the fruit to the top of a truck. There, a machine washed them as they bounced along a conveyor that spewed them by the thousands into a truck.

Cranberry harvesting is an annual colorful ritual in New Jersey. But this year is anything but typical.

“I haven’t seen this in my lifetime,” Lee said of a drought that farmers trace to summer.

The hues of the turning leaves that surround the farm are subdued. The grass is brown. A reservoir that pulls from the nearby Wading River is nearly empty. Campers along the nearby Batona Trail are prohibited from lighting campfires.

As Lee climbed into his truck, the temperature was heading toward an all-time high for the day of 82 in Philadelphia, last reached in 1946.

The lack of rain has been costly for cranberry farmers like the Lees who rely on local waterways to flood their bogs.

Cranberries are grown in dry bogs, which get flooded in fall, causing fruit to pop to the surface for easy harvesting. But this year farmers have had to pump from wells that tap into the Kirkwood-Cohansey Aquifer, a 17-trillion-gallon source of fresh water under the sandy soil. It costs a lot of money to run the pumps night and day.

“We’ve never done a harvest with all well water before,” Lee said. His farm, which sprawls 1,800 acres, normally draws water from the Wading River to feed 130 acres of cranberry bogs.

His son, Stephen V. Lee IV, standing nearby, held sheets of data that pulled from a weather station on the farm.

The data showed more than 12 inches of rain fell from August through October in 2022 and 2023.

This year: 1.54 inches for the same period. Zero for October.

“It is a crisis,” the younger Lee said.

Other cranberry farmers agree: It’s the worst drought they can recall. There’s no substantial chance of rain forecast for the next week.

The drought comes during the critical fall harvest that supplies homes with fresh cranberries or canned sauce on Thanksgiving, as well as a host of other products, such as juice.

New Jersey is the third top-producing cranberry state, behind Wisconsin and Massachusetts, respectively. New Jersey farmers hauled in 580,000 barrels of cranberries in 2023 with a total crop value of $20 million, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Farmers say the dry spell for them began around mid-August. Data from state climatologist and Rutgers University Professor David Robinson bears that out.

Robinson said this has been the driest October on record, stretching back to 1895. Average October rainfall in New Jersey is 4.19 inches. Moreover, it was the third driest September on record. It’s been the lowest two-month total of September and October on record, Robinson said.

For the farmers, it could not have come at a worse time. They begin harvesting in October and typically use water running downhill from local streams and rivers to flood the bogs. This year, they’ve had to run expensive pumping operations that’s put them behind schedule.

Lee III said they had to stop harvesting at times to wait for more water to be pumped, and he’s also had to rent an additional pump. The main well pump pulls crystal clear water from the aquifer at a rate of 3,600 gallons per minute. It’s been running almost continuously since Oct. 6.

Although the farms will take a financial hit from the thousands of hours to run the diesel pumps, consumers shouldn’t notice much of a difference in price of berries. That’s because farmers market their berries through Ocean Spray, a 700-member growers’ cooperative. Because other cranberry growing states aren’t having the same issues, the cost to consumers can be evened out.

Luckily, the lack of water does not appear to have impacted crop yield.

Bill Haines, 71, owner of the 1,436-acre Pine Island Cranberry Company in Washington Township, Burlington County, is also an Ocean Spray grower. He’s been farming for nearly 50 years and normally taps the Wading River for water. But not this year.

“I’ve never seen anything like this, and we’ve had some dry seasons,” said Haines. “Even when it’s dry, we’ll normally get a nor’easter come up the coast in September or October and help us out.”

He’s had to run seven pumps, some of which have been running “24 hours a day, seven days a week.”

Each pump burns seven to nine gallons of fuel an hour.

Farmers say early frosts have also forced them to pump more water than normal. Water gets sprayed on the berries as insulation.

William Cutts, 76, of the Cutts Brothers Cranberry Farm in Bass River, Burlington County, said frosts came early this year, and temperatures in some bogs dropped into the teens.

“We’ve had lots of nights in the low 20s and upper teens,” Cutts said.

So besides pumping to flood the bogs for harvest, he’s also been pumping to protect the fruit too.

“We’ve had to irrigate more,” Cutts said. “Our water supplies are low and so are our reservoirs. We haven’t had any real rain since early to mid-July. It has slowed us, and is continuing to slow us, making the worker harder. On top of that, we’ve had to deal with the frost. It cuts into our profits. We’re spending a lot of money on fuel oil to run pumps.”

Originally, he said, the members of Ocean Spray planned to close the cooperative’s Chatsworth receiving facility on Nov. 1. They’ve extended that to Nov. 7, he said.

But a later harvest also brings more chance of frost and the need for more water, Cutts noted.

“This is certainly the worst year that I’ve ever seen,” Cutts said of conditions.

Cranberry farmers could face a continued crisis even after the harvest is complete, said the elder Lee. Farmers use water to protect the cranberries over winter from deep freezes, as the ice provides insulation. But with such a rain deficit, it will take a long time to bring local waterways back to where they can be used to flood the bogs over winter. Normally, the cranberry plants are underwater from December through April.

So continued lack of rain could mean more pumping.

“If that cranberry bud gets frozen, we’re out of business next year,” Lee said. “We’ve got to figure out a way to protect these vines from cold. Our irrigation systems were designed for frost events in the spring and fall, not for a winter freeze.”