How China Swiped the Secret to American Blueberries

The Journal.

This episode explores how the American berry giant Driscoll's expanded its blueberry production into China, only to face a massive surge in local

Key takeaways

• China overtook the United States as the world's top blueberry producer between 2021 and 2025.
• Driscoll's utilized high-tech greenhouses and coconut husks in Yunnan to control nutrition and prevent soil-borne diseases.

Main topics

• Global blueberry production shifts
• Intellectual property theft in agriculture

Notable quotes

China... overtook the U.S. as the top, world's top blueberry producer.

Conclusion

The episode serves as a cautionary tale for Western companies regardin

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:05) Our colleague John Emond is based in Singapore, where he writes about business and geopolitics. And recently, he's become somewhat of a blueberry expert. What do you think makes a Speaker 3 (0:16) good blueberry? That's a great question. There are four things that you're looking for in a blueberry, okay? So there's taste, of course. You want a nice balance between sweetness and acidity. Speaker 2 (0:28) And Speaker 3 (0:29) then there's size. Ideally, you want a large, plump blueberry. Crispness. You want a crisp blueberry. And then here's the fourth one. Something called a bloom. B-L-O-O-M. You might notice on blueberries sometimes there's this sort of whitish powder. You could even sometimes confuse it for mold, but it's not. It's a sign of freshness. Speaker 2 (0:51) Uh-huh. The reason John knows so much about blueberries is that he recently went down a reporting rabbit hole. The story had to do with Driscoll's, the American berry giant. Speaker 3 (1:04) So I go to the grocery store, and I've started noticing that... Driscoll's was selling all these berries in Singapore grocery stores that were grown in Yunnan in southwest China. And, you know, I'm quite familiar with China. I did not remember there being lots of blueberries grown in Yunnan. And so I was just sort of intrigued, and they were making their way all the way to Singapore. What is going on here? Speaker 2 (1:29) What was going on was that Driscoll's placed a huge bet on China. And it worked so well that it ended up backfiring. Because now, many of the blueberries being grown and sold in China aren't even Driscolls. They're copycats. And the copycats are taking over. Speaker 3 (1:53) China was hardly producing any blueberries 15 years ago. And, you know, by 2021, it overtook the U.S. as the top, world's top blueberry producer. Speaker 2 (2:02) So, like, China has become a blueberry juggernaut. Speaker 3 (2:07) Yes, a blueberry superpower overnight. That's right. Speaker 2 (2:10) A blueberry superpower. It's sort of funny, but it's not funny if you're Driscoll's. Speaker 3 (2:17) No, no, this is deadly serious. Speaker 2 (2:22) Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business, and power. I'm Ryan Knudson. It's Tuesday, September 29th. Coming up on the show, a very serious episode about how Chinese companies elbowed their way to blueberry supremacy. Speaker 2 (2:57) For most of its history, China had been a land of no blueberries. And in the 2010s, Driscoll's decided it wanted to change that. When did China get on the radar and what were they thinking? Speaker 3 (3:10) Yeah, so about 15 years ago, they were looking to expand further and they were looking at places to grow. And China just quickly came to the top of the list. Japanese fruit Speaker 2 (3:20) makers were already in China growing strawberries. And after deciding that raspberries and blackberries were too foreign for the Chinese palate, Driscoll's decided that the Chinese market was ripe for blueberries. Speaker 3 (3:31) They saw something really smart, which was that there were all these macro trends converging in China. I mean, from just lightning economic growth to people wanting to eat healthier foods. They thought they had a narrow window of time to get in fast and start growing before others came. Speaker 2 (3:47) And so Driscoll sent their top blueberry expert to the southwestern Chinese province of Yunnan to scout for places to grow. Speaker 2 (3:56) Yunnan had a lot of potential. The climate lends itself to growing berries. But there were some challenges, too. Speaker 3 (4:03) They had some issues when they first rented land where waste was being dumped near their farms. They had issues with soil quality. You need really high-quality soil to grow the best berries. And so these were real challenges for Driscolls to grow there. They just needed to make sure that... the water was going to be clean, that their neighbors were going to sort of understand what they were doing. Speaker 2 (4:28) Driscoll's had to develop new technology to grow berries, like high-tech greenhouses. And instead of planting the blueberries in soil, they used coconut husks. Speaker 3 (4:38) This allows you to perfectly control the amount