Op-Ed

No need for a marketing order

By John Andresen

2/12/01 Ocean Spray has a surplus and is competing for market share. It is asking the industry to help bail it out of this situation, and asking growers to go out of business in the process. Ocean Spray has very successfully destroyed a flourishing industry by over supply, and at the same time is signing up new bogs in Canada and Wisconsin. It is asking the Cranberry Marketing Committee to pass a marketing order that will hurt everyone in the industry, to help save Ocean Spray.

This is the equivalent of General Motors asking Chrysler and Ford to please stop producing its cars for a while because GM has produced too many. At the same time GM refuses to cut back on its own production and builds more plants.

It seems to me that Ocean Spray can solve its own problems. It can increase formulation to 27%, cut back on its production, throw away some of its surplus, stop buying Canadian berries, and stop building new bogs in Canada and Wisconsin. When asked if they would consider doing these things, their answer is no. Well then doesn’t that make it their problem, and not the industries?

Ocean Spray can solve its own problems without putting a lot of people out of business. All large corporations figure out ways to help themselves stay in business without "Clobbering the competition" unless that is the plan. Ocean Spray led itself into this problem, let them lead themselves out of this mess and show the rest of the industry that they can be what they once were.

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