Small blueberry growers say they could lose their farms if they can't get stable pricing for their crops.

While the demand for the berry remains high - consumers are paying about $3 a pound - prices to growers fluctuate from around $1.25 a pound at the start of a growing season, to 50 cents or even less than 40 cents a pound, like last year, said local grower Gary Sandhar. Yet pickers are paid 55 to 60 cents a pound for their labour, not to mention other farm costs, he said.

There is a suspicion among those with farms 10 to 200 acres, that packers, who are also growers themselves in almost all cases, are keeping prices low.

"If this trend continues, we won't be able to break even," Sandhar said. The smaller farmers fear they will be squeezed out of the sector, bought up by the larger processor/farmers.

"As a whole they are cheating the farmers," said a frustrated Jarnail S. Heer at a recent grower meeting.

The answer may be to create their own co-operative, like raspberry growers have done in the past.

The blueberry farmers want to raise pricing concerns with Minister of Agriculture Steve Thomson and local MLAs.

A cold spring has also reduced crops.

In good years, the bushes can yield two or three harvests, but this year, 90 per cent of the crops are gone at the first pick, said Sandhar.

To voice their concerns, dozens of growers held an informal meeting in the park by Abbotsford City Hall on July 20 with the B.C. Blueberry Council to see what the council could do.

"What we're looking for is [pricing] stability, and some guidance from the blueberry council. Maybe we're out to lunch, maybe it's fair market value, but we want clear information to get to the growers and the packers. We need somebody in between," said Sandhar.

But the B.C. Blueberry Council's principal role is to market and promote their product, not market management, said council president Mike Makara.

"The council is not a price management body. We can't affect prices," he said.

Lynn Giesbrecht, a director with the B.C. Blueberry Council and a grower for 25 years, said prices fluctuate regularly.

"The prices go up and down, because the supply goes up and down through the season," she said. Values often start high early in the season, but as the harvest increases, the prices paid to farmers drop off, said Giesbrecht, whose husband also works in construction to supplement farm income.

The pressure is definitely on the small farmers, said Makara, a third-generation grower on Matsqui Prairie.

"If there's one message we can give out is that producers are getting a smaller and smaller returns every year," he said. "We're getting a smaller and smaller percentage of profit."

Growers' costs for fertilizers, herbicides, equipment and labour have gone up "phenomenally," he said.

Parm Bains, a grower and the owner of processing firm Westberry Farms in Abbotsford, said grower/packers are buffeted by international market prices, fluctuating exchange rates and other costs like all the other growers.

"We're now dealing with a global market," he said. Farmers here have to match prices offered by competitive growers in Michigan, B.C.'s largest competitor.

While B.C. has about 17,000 acres blueberries planted, produces 90 million pounds a year, and continues to grow, Michigan still has economies of scale B.C. doesn't.

B.C.'s blueberry sector expanded significantly in the last seven years when prices were high, and it continues to expand, but there are also more new growers in the U.S., Chile and even Argentina.

Bains agrees many small farmers could face a rough ride, but said there is a bright side in value-added products.

"For instance, fruit juices, dried blueberries, premium organic juice. That will definitely help over time," he said, adding no one is fixing prices.

"We all need each other. We're grower/packers. We're not like the big multinationals who don't understand the growers - we do."