Produce Update-January 30 2015
Weather was certainly in the news this week with a major storm hitting the East Coast, while we basked in spring like conditions on the West Coast all the way to central Alaska. As they say, what comes up, must go down, and as cold air plummeted down the East Coast it brought copious amounts of warm air up the West Coast. Record high temperatures were quite common through coastal California all week.Every year, we see new Meteorological terms – these huge swings in the Jet Stream that are bringing wilder storms to the East Coast are now called “Polar Vortex”. The near-permanent high pressure ridge that has been blocking Pacific storms from hitting California is now called the RRR (Ridiculously Resilient Ridge.) Which leads to the sad news that despite several walloping rainstorms in California in December, they have only recorded 25% of normal precipitation in January. As well, those December storms were so warm that only the highest peaks captured any critical snowpack, which now at 1/3 of normal, whatever normal is. This does not bode well for California producers – although there has been a substantial reduction of land area in California that has moved from Exceptional Drought back down to Severe Drought status, a year over year comparison is brutal.The Canadian Dollar continues to fall into “third world” territory, with a loss of 10% in January alone. We’re hoping higher prices on basic food commodities like fruit, vegetables and grains aren’t putting consumers off, and they can pay more with the hundreds of dollars a month many of them are saving at the gas pump.As mentioned a few days ago, some varieties of apples from BC growers have dried up substantially, and new supplies will come from the vast abundance in Washington over the next few months. However, the large US packers watch their movement very carefully and when demand exceeds their planned Controlled Atmosphere room openings and expected sales curves, prices go up – so expect to see high prices on Ambrosia, Granny, Braeburn and a few others as we move south. What a great Avocado week – we hit our biggest sales level ever with some fabulous pricing and great supply. With the Mexican Peso in the same basement as the Canadian dollar, we pay our growers without moving purchases and payments in and out of US dollars which lets us keep prices below market despite the growers getting Fairtrade pricing or better. You had better start thinking about a bigger display – this is from Statistics Canada, “Riding the dual waves of a Mexican cuisine boom and growing demand for healthy food, Canadian imports nearly tripled between 2004 and 2013, from 19,140 to 57,520 tonnes.” This may account for our cilantro sales being double what they were just two years ago!Watch for the jump on date prices – the crop was smaller because of water issues and we haven’t bumped the price before the dollar ‘crashed.’ Hope you are delighted with the green and yellow striped pink lemonade lemons – they are pretty cool to look at and selling through well as people look for something unique to dress up dinner. Watch all your lemon pricing as well – the fruit on the trees has to last for 4 months, and with water restrictions in place for some orchards already, there is some thinning going on to save water for a smaller crop. Expect upward adjustments over the next 2 weeks of 20%, but we will continue to keep the visual quality up by only ordering the fanciest fruit.We have received word that our first Peru mango container arrives in port Feb 8th with another one a week behind. We just love this program – the fruit is always picture perfect and buying direct from producers and landing containers in Vancouver, and avoiding hot water dipped fruit bought through US brokers always gives us the best quality. We’ve waived off a lot of mangos over the last few weeks with some terrible arrivals in L.A. from Ecuador, and now Peru. The specialty citrus spread has just doubled – hot weather has sugared up a lot of mandarin varieties, they’ve turned to orange and after those cold, cold nights a few weeks ago they are bursting with flavor and brix. We’ve added Hamlin oranges to the mix – these aren’t related to Valencia or Mandarin varieties – they are an old-school variety grown in Texas and Florida specifically as a juice orange with high pressure, lively taste and virtually seedless. With juicing becoming more popular than tracking Twitter, it’s just one additional item for that category.Confused about citrus grading? We buy fancy fruit from growers we have worked with for years who grade hard and pack beautiful fruit. That’s true for all citrus including lemon, lime and grapefruit. If there is no “fancy” designation, they just aren’t perfect. We also offer “Choice” which are prone to have marks from rubbing against stems or other fruit – so cosmetically imperfect. (Many packers use this grade for bagged fruit because the coloured mesh hides the imperfections. Ugly citrus doesn’t enter our market – it goes right to the juice factory. We have been offering more choice lines so you have the option for a cheaper retail, or so you can mix and match to bring your overall cost down.Running out of room here……we have a whack of Heirloom Siberian Kale from Agrofresco – it’s not quite as curly, weighs more per bunch, is less bitter and is the mother of kales – sort of like our first human mother Lucy. Unlike modern kales bred for fashion and easier to grow, this is actually the real thing. We purposely asked Gustavo to plant this as we saw the market for juicing kale getting out of control.