Demand booming for South African 'superfood' blueberries

Villiersdorp, South Africa

FLOPPY hats and face masks on, hundreds of workers carefully pick a bumper crop of blueberries on the sunny slopes of the Groenlandberg, a spur of South Africa's Hottentots Holland Mountains.

Declared a superfood, the purplish fruit has allowed South African producers to sail through the setbacks of the coronavirus pandemic, exporting punnet after punnet of berries all year.

At the Chiltern blueberry farm, workers surrounded by shrubland delicately packed small dark blue balls into neatly stacked boxes, ready for shipping. Global demand for…

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