Asparagus – Mexico farmers finally got their mojo going and better harvests are making the market move downward. South American shipments are helping to improve overall supplies, so quality and pricing are both improving.
Eggs – Are beginning their yearly climb in anticipation of Easter weekend. Breakfast buffets and Easter Eggs put a lot of stress on the chickens who have to work overtime to keep up with demand.
Grapes – Peruvian and Chilean volume into the U.S. continues to remain steady. Pricing has dropped over the past 2-3 weeks on red seedless, and green seedless pricing is starting to come down as volume increases with the consistent arrival of Chilean fruit. With delays in transit, there is fruit arriving that is sitting on the water for extended amounts of time, so some quality issues are arriving with the grapes. Pricing is expected to remain depressed though the end of March and into the beginning of April.
Lettuce – Cold west coast weather has the lettuce market on fire. Prices more than doubled two weeks ago when the chilly temperatures stopped the plants from growing. Quality took a big hit and there’s simply not a lot of nice looking lettuce available. This is affecting the big three; iceberg, romaine and leaf lettuce. We’re headed to springtime, though, and better days ahead.
Melons – Imported cantaloupes and honeydews remain a great buy right now, with super high quality and plentiful supplies keeping pricing low.
Onions – Supplies are improving as we see the first shipments of new crop onions getting started in Mexico. They’re starting the season with low quantities in storage, so we should see pricing remain steady at the higher levels until harvests increase.
Pepper, Squash, and Cucumbers – This week’s rains wiped out harvests in many fields, so supplies got extremely short on all east coast vegetables instantly. Demand exceeds supply on most items currently and will until the fields dry out and farm workers can get back out there and start picking again.
Trucking – Already high freight rates are climbing again with the insane fuel prices. For a truck that gets 6 mpg, $5 diesel gets really expensive on a 3500 mile cross country trip. This will add to the final cost of everything you buy personally and professionally. For example, about $16.25 of the cost of a bag of onions is just the freight to get it here currently.
Q: What does idk stand for?
A: I’ve asked lots of people but nobody seems to know.
