9-688-122
REV: MARCH 17, 2006

National Cranberry Cooperative (Abridged)
On February 14, 1981, Hugo Schaeffer, vice president of operations at the National Cranberry
Cooperative (NCC), called his assistant, Mel O’Brien, into his office and said:
Mel, I spent all day yesterday reviewing last fall’s process fruit operations at receiving plant #1 [RP1] with Will Walliston, the superintendent, and talking with the co-op members
[growers] in that area. It’s obvious to me that we haven’t solved our problems at that plant, yet. Even though we spent $100,000 last winter for a fifth Kiwanee dumper at RP1, our overtime costs were still out of control this fall, and the growers are still upset that their trucks and drivers had to spend so …show more content…

Eighty-seven percent of all growers voted in favor of the order, making it binding on all cranberry growers.
In 1980 the growers resorted to the Agriculture Marketing Agreement Act once again. Under the
Cranberry Marketing Order of 1980, the growers and the government agreed that 10% of the 1980 crop should be set aside. The set aside berries (berries that are either destroyed or used in a way that will not influence the market price) amounted to more than 200,000 bbls. (A barrel of cranberries weighs 100 lbs.) Handlers physically set aside 10% of the berries before harvesting, under the supervision of a committee of growers and representatives from the Department of Agriculture.

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National Cranberry Cooperative (Abridged)

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Another important trend was the increasing mechanization of cranberry harvesting. Water harvesting, in particular, was developing rapidly in the vicinity of receiving plant No. 1. Under the traditional dry harvesting, berries were hand-picked from the bushes. In water harvesting, the bogs were flooded, the berries were mechanically shaken from the bushes, and the berries then were collected easily since they floated to the surface of the water. Water harvesting could result in yields up to 20% greater than those obtained via dry harvesting, but it caused some damage and it
shortened