The species in this video is European blueberry, also called bilberry.
It's completely different from American blueberry, it's smaller and has a more intense flavor.
I’ve heard that the reason you mostly only find fresh American blueberries in stores (here in Sweden at least) is because you can’t commercially grow the European, they need to grow in the forest. Maybe this is some hybrid? I may be misinformed though.
EDIT: “Fun” fact! We have a lot of berries here in Sweden, a lot of money in that industry. It’s a bit shady also, relies on kind of modern slavery. People from SE Asia are shipped here on dubious promises (kind of like the construction workers in Qatar) and they get to roam the forests for berries. And during Covid the industry almost went bankrupt because they couldn’t “import” workers from other countries. 🫠
EDIT2: Another fun one. Most of our berries are exported to Asia. Instead, our berries (in stores) are imported from the Baltics.
I think every "rich" country has the same problems... No local Canadians want to harvest strawberries and raspberries. It's usually South Americans that do it.
Yeah. But I got the impression that in the US or Canada they at least get paid. Probably cash and very little. Here it was more like a slave camp. They got food etc, but had to work to pay off their “debt” for travel, passports confiscated etc.
United States has the same issue. But what we’re doing now is deporting everyone who worked on farms and crashing the economy so that Americans can get back to the fields where we belong.
No problem growing or harvesting bilberry commercially, although it's a bit more demanding than most berries. The real reason is as you noted the way cheaper option of importing pickers rather than cultivating.
Most Swedes that want blueberries more than occasionally go pick and freeze ourselves. Just one day in the forest is usually more than enough for a year.
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u/redditproha 2d ago
I thought blueberries grew on shrubs