Produce Update-April 15 2015

Ouch!   Watch your retails for the next few days and we’ve had to make many price corrections for the second half of the week – the California transition from the desert South to the coastal Salinas areas is not going well – either crops are late or there has been another surge of growth of organics, but it’s a sellers’ market, if there is anything to sell.  If I was a sales rep for a major organic greens supplier, I would be hiding under my desk.  Listings from the 10 different major California organic farms we work with are pathetic: “next week,” “call”, “out,” and what is available is expensive with a capital $.  Low water and insect pressure seem to be taking their toll as well.  With strong supply from Gustavo Gaya, our Mexican contractor way down in San Miguel de Allende, we have changed our shipping schedule and have amped up orders on everything he can put together.We got slammed this week on an unexpected rush on broccoli and celery, and having a truck breakdown in Utah gave us a gap, but that means we will have oodles of product for Thursday on, with another load on its heels.  Specialty citrus is winding down ever so quickly, and only 4% of the Navel crop is left to ship, so prices have jumped this week.  This puts more pressure on Valencia orchardists to ramp up production, and they have to gauge the volume of fruit they have on their trees to try to get through until November, which in turn brings pricing up.  Citrus production will be down again this year, with many growers cutting their orchards due to lack of irrigation water.  If they cut the trees off at the knees, they will grow new shoots, which will keep the trees alive, but needimg very little water.  If weather returns to normal, those shoots will quickly re-develop into productive trees within a few years.  That’s the theory.  Just need weather to return to normal!  There are mountains of strawberries on their way – we should be back in stock by the time you read this – just had an unexpected rush earlier this week we hadn’t counted on, but seems people are enjoying having that great Martinez brand back this year, and the quality has been awesome!On the root front, there are still no red onions, but the first harvests of spring sweets are underway so the gap will be short, and we shouldn’t have a gap on yellows.  First sweet whites (what we would call salad onions) are in the market from Del Cabo.  Potatoes – well, prices will continue to inch up for a few weeks until more areas of California start harvesting reds and yellows, and our supply of Manitoba and PEI is winding down quickly, although we are strong on Russets for some time.Two trucks of Fairtrade avocados, grapefruit, limes and mangos left Michoacan today, so we expect to see them early next week.  We are in good shape on all the Pragor product right now, and are excited to have the first Mexican Fair Trade mangos for next week – Ataulfo and Tommy.