MARKET REPORT - JAN. 13TH, 2016 - WATCH YOUR RETAILS! And other good news

WATCH YOUR RETAILS! And other good news.You have been consistently warned by me that the organic supply chain was in climate chaos, road chaos, El Nino chaos and just general other kinds of chaos, and the birds have come home to roost this week with substantial price changes.  WATCH YOUR RETAILS!  Some prices are adjusting Thursday by 20% or more on a selection of greens, including celery, and all sub-tropicals – tomatoes, eggplant, cukes, zucchini, cherry toms etc.  Coastal California growers can’t get machinery into fields to harvest in the mud. Unseasonal temperatures across the south have slowed growth, right down into Mexico.  Road closures from landslides and heavy rain have affected Baja north into San Diego County.  There is a virtual bidding war for some product – especially celery and cauliflower.  Sorry to start off with bad news….and here’s more.Washington fruit growers are seeing huge demand on remaining storage apples, even though they have several months’ worth of some, and prices are huge on many varieties.  Unfortunately Washington can only export their highest quality fancy apples – no regular old fancy or domestic get across the line, – that’s just the law, so we’re forced to buy the most expensive grades of apples and pears.  With the price we were quoted on Honeycrisps by one grower today at $112 US (which is about $163 delivered at our dock in Canadian dollars), well….we worked the retail price out to about $4 each, and they are small, so about a buck a bite.  If you want some let us know – be happy to order some in for you – but no split cases!As we slowly watch the price of Canadian oil (quality wise already the bottom of the barrel, as it were) drop and drop, we wonder, why in hell are we paying so much for fuel?  And why several of our trucking providers have increased their rates?  So the last piece of bad news is that in the next few days we are going to have to make subtle upcharges to pricing to account for these rate increases.  Nope there’s more - the Canadian dollar is down again – a drop of 4% over the last 28 days.  Lovely.So what’s great?  Blueberries are great – actually stunningly great – they kinda  taste like local Fraser Valley fruit and not export fruit picked immature for long shelf life.  Pineapple are great and seasonally well priced.  The ginger is beautiful and seems to have improved with age as Canada Customs sat on the container for 9 days and once again, they came up empty, after hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of containers of bananas, avocado, mango and ginger, and dozens and dozens of inspections– they still haven’t found what they were looking for.  And the mangos are great – what we could call a perfect arrival – we were texting pictures back and forth into the evening after the container arrived yesterday afternoon- yup, that great!  And the Agrofresco load that just arrived last night is great – beautiful Brussels sprouts and the first few cases of trial crops we’ve started on this year – broccolini and bunched beets – and a mountain of celery.  And the avocados continue to be great.   So let’s just focus on the great, and not how much our customers are having to pay for fresh fruit and vegetables because of climate change, El Nino and the stupid price of oil…..but watch your retails for the weekend please.  We ride out these price storms every year.  In fact it was just as bad this time last year after a crippling freeze in soCal in the first week of January, but with a 92 cent dollar.