The biggest wild blueberry grower in the country is quietly selling off almost 800 acres of low-yield fields and woodlands in Midcoast Maine, saying it plans to reinvest the $3.2 million combined asking price back into its business.

Jasper Wyman & Son of Milbridge has listed these seven properties: 118 acres in Whitefield for $499,000; three lots totaling 285 acres in Northport for $1.4 million; two lots totaling 227 acres in Union for $1 million, and a 151-acre lot in Somerville for $299,000.

It’s been a challenging year for the wild blueberry industry, including Wyman’s and its growing partners, according to the company’s marketing director, Colleen Craig. But the family-owned business started planning for the sale of low-yield acreage before this year’s small harvest, she said.

“While not a result of the small harvest, in a year of limited supply and high fruit costs, selling non-strategic land is helpful in fostering our continued investment in growth for the long term,” Craig said Friday in a written statement.

The sales are being handled by Cates Real Estate, a Rockland-based brokerage.

Some people who live near the listed properties are worried the land will be turned into housing, gravel pits or solar farms. One group, a nonprofit called The Wild Blueberry Collective, is trying to raise $750,000 to buy one of the Northport lots, according to founder Gloria Pearse.

“We want to prevent something so special and unique to Maine from disappearing,” Pearse said.

Neighbors have come together to stop the development of other barrens. Last year, a community group stopped the development of a residential subdivision on a 38-acre barren in Blue Hill, and came up with a funding plan to purchase the property from the would-be developer.

Wyman’s acquired the lots it is selling as part of its 2021 buyout of Allen’s Blueberry Freezer of Ellsworth. The acquisition included 2,800 acres; a receiving station to clean, grade and sort picked berries; a processing facility; and a 50,000-square-foot cold storage warehouse.

Wyman’s is continuing to grow and harvest blueberries on the most productive fields acquired from the Allen’s deal, Craig said. The purchase brought Wyman’s total Maine land holdings to about 10,000 acres, according to a 2021 company statement about the deal.

He didn’t want to talk about Wyman’s plans, but Eric Venturini, the head of the Wild Blueberry Commission of Maine, told state lawmakers last month that Maine’s actively managed acreage had declined 20% over the last five years, from 60,000 acres to 40,000 acres.

The industry, which included 521 farms by the last federal count, produced $45.4 million worth of blueberries during the summer of 2023, down from $68.4 million the year before, according to the National Agricultural Statistics Service. More recent data was unavailable.

Overall, the blueberry industry pumps about $361 million into Maine’s economy each year, Venturini said.

But a 45% drop in field prices, a doubling of production costs and climate-related pressures like drought spell big trouble for Maine’s wild blueberry industry, he said. Venturini told lawmakers that growers suffered $28 million in losses last year.

“As the only state in the country with a tradition of wild blueberry production — a tradition that first started with Wabanaki stewardship thousands of years ago — this is not a trend that we can sit back and watch,” he said. “To survive, our industry needs emergency relief.”