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.
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u/Laslou 2d ago edited 2d ago
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.