MARKET REPORT – JULY 31ST, 2015
YET ANOTHER HEAT WAVE...
...is sweeping the entire Pacific Coast – and Vancouverites are actually starting to miss the rain – who woulda thunk! The entire fruit harvest has generally speaking, bumped forward at least two weeks if not more. 10 years ago we picked up our last blueberries from Ron Warkentin on September 5th. (18 years ago his last ship day was Sept 29th.) Here on the last day of July, 10 years later, he is doing his last harvest of his latest variety today – 5 weeks early! Heat has its positive sides as well, giving ground-croppers of tomatoes, peppers, cukes and eggplant a potentially much longer season before September frosts as well as earlier harvests of winter squash. Those hit the hardest with this scorching summer are green vegetable growers who are battling irrigation, fast growing weeds and much shorter windows for harvest – especially spinach, lettuce and Asian vegetables. Lettuce harvesters are starting as early as 4 AM in the Fraser Valley.
On the apple front, early apples are in stock and moving well. We are over-stocked on large NZ Braeburn apples and have adjusted pricing so that every apple is the same price per each – our incentive to get you to stock larger sizes. Fujis are moving quickly with little export fruit available – we expect to be out of smaller sizes this week, but there’s lots of well-priced large fruit available. As mentioned, blueberries are racing to ripen, but there are many growers and we expect that the season will run for another couple of weeks. The end is near to a very compressed season, and if you are going to stock up to freeze some blues for winter inventory for your juice bar, now is the time. Cherries are stunning this year with continued great supply from the Sproule’s in Oyama. Other than them and a few growers outside the oven of the South Okanagan, everyone else is done and we expect the season to wrap up in a few weeks.When you see those Pomelo sized grapefruit (18/23/27s) on the list and think that’s stupid – we are bringing them in because they are actually selling quite well,– surprise yourself – besides they are quite a bit cheaper!Lemon pricing just won’t slow down on the race to the stars. We should have seen this coming years ago and begged Mexican lime growers to graft on yellow lemons – a fruit rarely seen in Mexico. But they are perking up their ears now. In one town where we work, Atotonilco de Alto in Jalisco, local conventional growers are getting just $1 a box for Persian limes from local buyers – would life ever change for them if they converted to organic and grafted lemons!The melon season is going to be a perfect match with the weather for a few weeks – and production in BC is sensational – multiple varieties from multiple growers, and the selection will only widen. We are just about done in California as we transition to Inaba’s bins. Inaba is a fourth generation farm near Yakima, Washington (where temperatures have been in the 40-43C range for a few days – producing the sweetest melons possible.) They grow these beautiful dark green Imperial Jade Star melons that are just amazing and just the right size – usually in the 8-12 pound range – these will arrive early in the week!We may even see bins of BC melons this year – they take longer to grow and most producers have shied away from them – because of the ‘normal’ growing season – but this may be the year!Peaches? What can we say – it’s a stunning crop this year – heavy on big sizes and we’re well into the transition to freestone Glohaven and Cresthaven’s. The plum market is all screwed up, every variety is coming on at different times – we’re already listing Italian Prunes and Elephant Hearts – some of the latest varieties while other growers are harvesting the earliest Gold Shiro – either way, they are beautiful, no matter which order they arrive in!On the green veg front we’re a little surprised by how much we’re having to fill in on some commodities from south of the line – of course we’d like to keep that to a minimum, when all the bok choy has bolted or there isn’t enough red cabbage, well, we gotta do what we gotta do. Generally it’s been an awesome front half of the local veg season with a great early start, but demand for local organics continues to surge and some stuff is just hard to keep in supply. Of course we continue to pull stunning product from Ralph’s in Mount Vernon. Being just a few miles from the ocean, he rarely gets as affected by heat as other growers.Our current heat wave hasn’t missed California, adding stress to cool-loving crops. Expect to see very unseasonable pricing on broccoli and cauliflower for some time until the weather settles down.Roots are all good – everything that grows underground is above ground on our racks.What’s new this week? A great supply of local corn – about 2 weeks early! First BC Celery – about 2 weeks early! Great selection of BC Tomatoes – goodbye Mexico for a few months on most sku’s – and also 2 weeks early. Great pricing on a wide range of interior field crops.For those of you who get to enjoy a long weekend – have a great one!