04/12/2024
🚨 🅟🅡🅞🅓🅤🅒🅔🅓🅤🅓🅔 🅟🅤🅛🅢🅔 🚨
𝐘𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐦𝐨𝐬𝐭 𝐫𝐞𝐜𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐏𝐫𝐨𝐝𝐮𝐜𝐞 𝐌𝐚𝐫𝐤𝐞𝐭 𝐔𝐩𝐝𝐚𝐭𝐞
🥑 AVOCADOS – ESCALATED
Last week’s harvest closed at 63M pounds up 15% vs. the previous week, and back to falling within the prior 6-week average. Projections are calling for over 70M pounds to be harvested for the US this week, but with the current weakness in the spot market on select sizes - Mexico is finally slowing things down. The size curve coming off the trees continues to favor larger fruit, and this trend will continue through April. The Normal crop continues to mature, and dry matter is averaging 34%. Market pricing fell across all sizes over the past week.
😋 ASPARAGUS – ESCALATED
Asparagus production continues to decrease from Mexico due to seasonality. Peru has started with light production and markets have begun to react due to the anticipated lower volume at the end of next week. Due to seasonality and shed maintenance, white asparagus will remain very limited from Peru until mid-June.
🧅 ONIONS - ESCALATED
The onion market remains strong, but for a third consecutive week, it did not increase. White onions remain nonexistent in Idaho/Oregon, and extremely tight in Washington. We did begin to see a few more Mexican whites, and even a handful of yellows begin to cross in a small way this week. This would line up with the reports that Mexico has quit purchasing the domestic supply out of the Pacific Northwest as well. We are anticipating that in the next 1-2 weeks, Mexico will start bringing across a large enough crop to help ease the supply concerns in the Pacific Northwest. We should see Texas onions start about the first or second week in March as well. For the first time in a long while, there is some relief around the corner. Growers in the Northwest continue to experience a decrease in pack-outs with each passing week that the onions sit in storage. While this is often a recipe for the market to increase, we are seeing more growers want to run higher volumes of product at the current FOB levels, and not risk further shrink and claims as we get later into the season. If there are no weather events or unexpected supply interruptions, we feel there is a good chance that we have hit the ceiling on the current market for the time being. This can change very quickly should a weather event occur down in Texas/Mexico. California has experienced quite a bit of rain, and summer onion growers are becoming bullish that this may an effect on yields this Summer. However, it is still too early to tell how supply and FOBs will behave from May and beyond.
GREEN ONIONS – ESCALATED The market remains strong as growers are facing some quality issues in the growing areas of Mexico. Market is expected to continue to be strong through next week.
🥦 BROCCOLI – ESCALATED
Salinas broccoli volumes are increasing but still below normal. Market remains firm at higher prices and quality is very nice.
🥬 CABBAGE, RED – ESCALATED
Quality is good although supplies continue lighter. Market is steady.
🥕 CARROTS (JUMBOS, MEDIUMS & CELLOS) – ESCALATED Steady supplies continue with good quality. Shippers still have light volume on dumbos out of California.
🍇 TABLE GRAPES – EXTREME Grape availability remains at record lows on all varieties, and we expect this to continue through the month with elevated pricing on market business. There is more fruit on the water and scheduled to arrive and conditions are expected to slowly improve over the next 2 weeks. We do expect firm markets until the Mexican crop begins in approximately 4-5 weeks. Quality is fair and we are still asking for subs to black grape since they seem to have the best quality and legs over the red and greens.
🥬 LETTUCE (ICEBERG, ICEBERG BLENDS, ROMAINE, ROMAINE HEARTS, ROMAINE HEARTS BLENDS) – ESCALATED
• Iceberg: We continue to see a wide range of quality, head size and weights. Market pricing appears to be trending slightly lower. However, industry supplies are still forecasted to remain below normal for this time of year.
• Romaine, & Romaine Hearts: Romaine and romaine heart production is steady. Demand continues to show strength with good to fair quality, markets remain strong. Many shippers have finished in Yuma for the season, so we will see supplies out of both Yuma and Salinas through next week.
🍊 ORANGES (MEDIUM & SMALL SIZES) – EXTREME
Small size oranges continue to be in extremely short supply and will remain in short supply for the remainder of the navel season and into the valencia season. In addition, forecasted rain in the orange growing regions in central California will lead to delays in harvesting and trucks getting out timely. Early Valencia's are starting in a very light way with sizing trending large as well. Flexibility on sizing and loading areas will be mandatory in order to get orders filled!
🥔 POTATOES – ESCALATED
The market continues to feel stable on all sizes and grades for the moment, except for 40ct potatoes. While potatoes should remain plentiful, we do anticipate 40ct potatoes will continue to command a premium more often than not until the end of the crop. They have continued to be available for mixers, but we are not seeing very much straight load availability, or even availability in heavy volume. There will be some lots that are better than others throughout the season, but this does appear to be a theme moving forward. Because of this, we do anticipate that we may see a gap between 40ct/50ct and the rest of the sizes. The good news is that food service sized cartons in the middle size range (60/70/80) appear to be plentiful. Unfortunately, at their current return levels on 90s/10s/2s/and retail bags, growers are losing quite a bit of money. We will see Norkotahs wind down around the middle of Q2 and will be left exclusively with Burbanks (around the end of April). This will continue until new crop Norkotahs begin shipping fresh from the field in August. In general, there are no major headwinds expected in the potato market during Q2.
🫛 SNOW & SNAP PEAS – ESCALATED
Guatemala's snow peas and sugar snaps production remains unchanged but will decrease within the next two weeks due to the heat. Out of the west, a steady supply of snows and sugar snaps.
🌶️ HOT PEPPERS – ESCALATED
Record low supplies and higher demand are pushing prices higher across the entire category. Overall, the quality is fair, but we expect to see a large imbalance in supply over the next 4-6 weeks. Once some of the newer growing areas begin production, we hope to see some relief. in the meantime, we will continue to see the potential for shorts and escalated pricing. In Mexico, the main growing regions in Sinaloa are ending and Cadereyta is not starting until the end of this month. Typically, the Sinaloa season goes on for a few more weeks and we don’t see this supply GAP. However, due to weather related issues the GAP is bigger this season. In the east, we are seeing the same thing, typically a lot of pepper is available out of Florida this year to offset the transition crops in Mexico, between less acreage being planted and weather we have a lighter supply available for market. We will not see improvement in the east until South Georgia starts Mid-May. Until then markets are going to continue to be firm and see pricing above the $40 watermark on most varieties.
🍅 TOMATOES (ROUNDS & SNACKING) - ESCALATED
Tomatoes: East Coast
• Round Tomatoes: Markets remain escalated as weather last week caused delays and yield loss in the older crops throughout Immokalee, which has put extra pressure on the market until growers can start packing the spring regions. We expect higher markets through the 3rd week of April when we expect to see more volume out of the newer areas. Quality will be hit and miss over the next week.
• Cherry Tomatoes: We expect to see very short crops, escalated pricing, and potential for pro-rates continue through March.
Tomatoes: Mexico
• Round Tomatoes: With the ongoing issues with the winter Mexican tomato season. We are now in spring decline out of Sinaloa, combined with a very slow Sonoran season we are seeing high markets and short supply once again. The Mexican Government is slated to start reducing water allocations in Sinaloa which will force some farmers to cease operations prematurely. We will see some supply GAPS until Sonora can effectively start harvesting fruit. Currently, they are behind and already projecting below normal yields; ongoing cold weather combined with late rains have hurt pollination and maturation of the fruit and plants. We hope to see some of this improve over the next 4 weeks as other growing regions throughout Mexico are scheduled to ramp up and assist in some of the current shortfalls but that is still weeks away.
• Cherry Tomatoes:
Crops out of Mexico are slowly improving and we are seeing a downward trend on price as the volume increases. Unfortunately, with the imbalance on the east coast due to less acreage planted and weather-related pressure, markets remain at record highs. We will see this continue until Florida can produce volume consistently.
• Medley Grape Tomatoes:
Lighter volume this week with fair quality.
🍉 WATERMELON - EXTREME
Demand exceeds supply conditions as spring arrives. Overall quality is good out of Mexico, and the offshore season is done. We expect to see very high demand and low supply through April.
Sourced from: Produce Alliance
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