Produce Update-February 27 2015

It couldn’t be more fun than this!  On Tuesday we were at the grapefruit packing shed in Nueva Italia, inland from Ixtapa, while our growers were packing our grapefruit load.  That truck arrives mid-week with the first Fairtrade Organic Key Limes (ever) as well.  This is just a small test to see how many of you want to sell small traditional limes alongside regular Persian ones.      Just a few hours later we were in Apatzingan watching our next avocado order being packed.  It is actually very rare for importers to venture to the packing sheds in foreign countries, and the crews at both sheds are always honoured to actually talk to the customer they are packing fruit for, especially at that moment!  We were able to see a few of our vegetable trials we have running in that area of Michoacan as well, as we try to find additional products that Fairtrade avocado growers can produce in vacant corners of their avocado groves.  Some of these trials have bombed, but part of our mission is to finance these trials knowing that the growers (as well as ourselves) will luck out and find some good market opportunities, especially where the production window is aimed at filling a normal gap period, and when they work out, it’s great, and when they don’t, we just chalk it up as a good attempt.We also had a couple of separate meetings with mango growers and fingers crossed we will be able to seamlessly move from our Peruvian Fairtrade program directly into the Mexican spring run, and for the first time in years will have all our Mexican Ataulfo, Tommy and Hadens in a FLO Fairtrade program as well.A fast market rundown – prices continue to climb on all Mexican tomatoes, cukes, zucchini etc.  This is directly related to the incredible cold that brought frost as far south as Orlando, Florida last week, and another cold surge brought snow to many winter growing areas in Georgia, Alabama yesterday – all markets across the US and Canada for these products are all being served from Mexico, with a substantial amount of field production from Texas to Florida frozen out.  This has truly been a remarkable winter, with temperatures far above normal across the West, and the coldest winter ever on record for vast areas of the Eastern US and Canada.  Flying home yesterday, people in Dallas were bundled up as if they were in Winnipeg. The least affected areas for water and temperature have been Northern Mexico, even taking into account the big freeze in the first week of January.By far the scariest news out this week is the current state of the California drought.  While there has been some considerable rainstorms this year, 60% of California’s water comes from snow-melt from winter snows that fall across the Sierra’s, which replenish reservoirs and groundwater aquifers.  The current water content of the snow in the Sierra’s is 13% of normal, and the lowest ever recorded….so we are talking about hundreds of billions of gallons of water that aren’t stored up in the mountains this year to re-charge grower’s wells this summer. Water rights in California are controlled by the State, and growers that rely on water systems and irrigation canals have already had their water use restricted to 15% of their requirements across hundreds of thousands of acres.The last 6 weeks have seen near record high temperatures across the Imperial and Yuma winter growing regions, and succession plantings that are timed to come on, one field after another, based on planting dates, have speeded up substantially because of the heat.  There has been a glut on broccoli and celery for the last couple of weeks because of this.  Producers who planted expecting to have supply in that area available until early April are now expecting to be finished in the next 10 days.  This puts a huge amount of pressure on growers in central California (Salinas etc.) to come up with supply.  There is always a bit of a choppy transition as production moves north, and the only saving grace this year is that the Salinas / Watsonville growers are also 2-3 weeks ahead of schedule, but the volumes will not be there during March and early April to cover demand.  Just a heads up to expect current low pricing on greens to move to a 6 week stretch of volatility until production catches up 6 weeks out.Grapefruit will be tight until mid-week when our load from Pragor arrives (same one mentioned before)Romaine continues to be very tight.  We have a whack coming from Ecocampos but it will not arrive until Tuesday, so expect to see very little before then.  Prices reflect tight supply.