Wall Street Journal: Driscoll’s Brought Blueberries to China, but Local Rivals ‘Learned’ Its Cultivation Technology

About 15 years ago, executives from U.S. fruit grower Driscoll’s arrived in China aiming to make blueberries the country’s next popular food. The California-based company sent an expert to survey farmland in Yunnan province in southwestern China, signed contracts with global blueberry breeding firms to secure premium varieties, and introduced high-tech cultivation methods to mass-produce the fruit, which few Chinese consumers had eaten at the time. By 2020, Driscoll’s was supplying thousands of tons of blueberries to major supermarkets across China.

Soon after, the company became yet another American business facing fierce competition from Chinese rivals.

As word spread that blueberry farming could generate wealth, Chinese entrepreneurs quickly established their own farms. They adopted high-tech cultivation methods similar to Driscoll’s and were even accused of copying the greenhouse designs used by Driscoll’s contracted growers. A ruling by a Chinese court also revealed that some companies had stolen the company’s patent-protected varieties. State-owned banks further fueled the boom by offering special loans to blueberry farmers.

Since 2010, China’s blueberry production has increased 25-fold. In 2021, China surpassed the U.S. to become the world’s largest blueberry producer, and by 2025, its annual output had reached twice that of the U.S.

For Chinese consumers, this has been a blueberry bonanza. Prices have dropped to very low levels, with a 9-ounce box typically costing just $3 or less. Official media have loudly proclaimed the arrival of the era of 'blueberry freedom,' where ordinary people can freely enjoy a fruit that was once quite rare.

But for nearly everyone in the blueberry industry, this has been a brutal battle, plagued by intellectual property infringement and sharply declining profits.

This pattern is common across many Chinese industries, especially as economic growth slows. Companies seeking new profit opportunities flood into promising emerging sectors, rapidly scaling up with low-cost government-backed financing, sometimes skirting intellectual property compliance. The result is rapid overcapacity and collapsing prices.

In China, this competitive cycle is known as 'involution.' For companies like Nike and Starbucks, this competition has turned the Chinese market from a former 'cash cow' into a challenging battleground.

Driscoll’s has filed over 20 lawsuits in China. The company alleges that some firms took its intellectual property-protected blueberry plants, propagated them, and then sold them to competing growers. Some Western fruit companies have also partnered with private investigators, sending undercover agents posing as buyers or farmers into nurseries to purchase plants, which are then quickly sent to labs for DNA testing to prove they are illegally cloned varieties.

The International Blueberry Organization warned in an August report: 'Illegal nurseries and illegal cultivation are extremely large in scale, meaning thousands of hectares of illegal farms will continue operating normally, with thousands more hectares expected to be added in the future.'

For decades, China has been reluctant to develop the large-scale corporate farms that helped make the U.S. an agricultural superpower. Now, through innovation, technology, and imitation, China is showing competitiveness in more agricultural sectors, with large agribusinesses playing an increasingly prominent role.

From avocados to durians, China is expanding into new cash crops, and its tomato paste production is so massive that two years ago, Italian farmers even deployed a fleet to protest the unloading of Chinese tomato products at the port of Salerno.

Satellite data published by researchers at the University of Copenhagen in the journal Nature Food shows that in 2019, about 60% of the world’s greenhouses were concentrated in China, significantly boosting fruit and vegetable output. The latest data suggests this proportion is even higher now.

Farmers around the world had hoped China’s 1.4 billion population would continue absorbing more imported agricultural products. While China still imports large quantities of soybeans, beef, and dairy, domestic food production capacity has improved in recent years, causing total agricultural imports to stagnate. Although China opened its market to U.S. fresh blueberries in 2020, the expanding domestic output and tariff factors have effectively shut out American farmers.

'It’s just China,' said David Smith, a Shanghai-based fruit industry consultant. 'Wherever they enter, once they decide to grow something, they outscale everyone else.'

Sowing the Seeds

Privately held Driscoll’s traces its history back to two entrepreneurial strawberry growers in early 20th-century California. By partnering with hundreds of independent growers across the U.S., the company grew into the largest berry producer in America. Driscoll’s provides proprietary plant varieties to farmers, who grow and harvest strawberries, blueberries, and other fruits, which are then packaged in clear plastic clamshell containers bearing the Driscoll’s logo and sold.

Seeking overseas expansion, Driscoll’s executives explored Latin American and Asian markets around 2012. China’s lightning-fast economic growth made it one of the most attractive target markets.

At the time, raspberries and blackberries were too unfamiliar to Chinese consumers and struggled to gain acceptance, while the strawberry business had already been claimed by Japanese firms. Driscoll’s management turned its attention to blueberries and eventually partnered with other Western companies that could provide both cultivation technology and genetically suitable plant varieties.

Driscoll’s dispatched top blueberry expert John Weisz to Yunnan to establish and launch local production. Weisz had gained internal recognition for successfully setting up blueberry production bases in Mexico. He traveled across Yunnan with a driver, scouting potential sites. Driscoll’s moved so quickly at the time that it hadn’t even set up a local bank account for Weisz. The company revealed that Weisz once maxed out his personal credit card to cover driver wages and other daily expenses.

Driscoll’s began trial cultivation, but challenges followed. While Yunnan’s climate—abundant sunlight during the day and cool nights—was ideal for berry growth, soil quality was generally poor. Additionally, some neighbors near Driscoll’s farms discharged wastewater near its fields.

Driscoll’s scrapped its initial plan. Instead of the open-field cultivation common in the U.S., the company switched to greenhouse farming equipped with a water supply system isolated from pollution by neighboring farms. Plants were no longer dependent on local soil but were grown in soilless substrates made from coconut fiber, with nutrients and filtered water delivered via drip irrigation.

'Everyone thinks farming in China is low-cost, but our model is completely different,' said Soren Bjorn, who stepped down as Driscoll’s CEO this summer in a planned leadership transition. He admitted that blueberry farming in China 'is among the most expensive operations we have globally.'

Before long, Driscoll’s had built a small but significant berry business in China. The company partnered with over 150 growers, producing about 30,000 tons of fresh blueberries annually in Yunnan—nearly equivalent to California’s total annual output.

In Yunnan nurseries, Driscoll’s grows millions of plants under LED lights before distributing them to partner growers.

One of its flagship varieties is Eureka Sunrise, a large-fruit, high-sugar variety developed by Australian company Mountain Blue. Around 2014, Driscoll’s secured long-term exclusive rights in China to several premium varieties from Mountain Blue.

Blueberries became wildly popular in the Chinese market. Parents bought them, believing they could relieve their children’s eye strain from prolonged screen time. Ice cream shops launched blueberry flavors, and sweet-and-tart blueberry tea drinks became bestsellers.

Pinko Liu, 30, from Zhejiang province on China’s east coast, said she ate up to a pound of blueberries daily for two years. She never thought blueberries could taste so crisp and sweet.

The Blueberry Boom

Competitors sprouted across Yunnan.

Shenzhen-based agrochemical and agriculture giant Noposion quickly acquired thousands of acres for blueberry cultivation. Official media praised blueberries as a 'golden fruit' capable of revitalizing rural economies.

As China’s economy slowed and investment opportunities dwindled, Beijing-based private equity investor Jack Zhu began searching for the next big opportunity. He said some blueberry growers claimed investment returns as high as 200%. By 2024, Zhu decided to go all-in on blueberry farming.

He leased 250 acres of land in Yunnan through his company, Lanxing Agriculture.

He invested heavily in the project, ensuring harvested blueberries could reach store shelves via refrigerated trucks within two days.

Soon, blueberry farms spread across the valleys of Yunnan.