- I have bought berries since I was in the 9th, then I started buying lingonberries.
It's 50 years ago, and I've never been with my husband.
A picker in Mesele that I met the other day had picked over 58 kilos of cloudberries in one day, says berry buyer Sylve Björkman, when SVT Västerbotten meets him in Fredrika.
According to him, the weather conditions have been ideal for cloudberry growth.
- It has been perfect.
First warm and then a little cooler.
If it continues like this, you can pick cloudberries until the blueberry season starts.
According to him, the cloudberry pickers in Västerbotten are currently cutting about 26 kilograms per day and the compensation is around SEK 50 per kilo.
In a normal year, the pickers usually weigh 8 kilograms per day on average.
Many more foreign pickers
Almost twice as many foreign citizens have also received a residence permit this year compared to last year when there were more restrictions linked to the pandemic.
This year it has been easier and everyone who has come to Västerbotten has been vaccinated with a syringe before they came here.
They can get the second syringe here, or when they get home to Thailand.
It is the employers' demand that governs how many people receive a residence permit for berry picking, and the Swedish Migration Board had week 28 approved 5,126 permits.
Happiness for Thai rice farmers
Anchuda Tatiyanantaporn is with the pickers in the Fredrika area and can speak English.
She helps with weighing and administration and says that the pickers are very satisfied.
- There are plenty of cloudberries, the weather is good and they earn well, so they are very happy.
She, like the other pickers in the area, comes from the province of Chaiyaphum in northeastern Thailand where they work as rice farmers.
According to the carrier entrepreneur Sylve Björkman, if the berry season is to continue to develop well, two things are needed:
- We want rain and sun now, he says.
See more about the fantastic cloudberry season in the Fredrika area in the video.