Warm weather along California's Central Coast has made for dips in supplies of lettuce. That's resulted in strong prices and a strong market for lettuce coming out of California.“The market for lettuce has been quite strong, even in spite of the holiday weekend, which has a tendency to disrupt normal movement,” said Mark McBride of Coastline Produce. “If anything, the market looks to get stronger.” He cited high night temperatures as one of the reasons for the current market. Because lettuce requires a certain difference between temperatures at night and during the day in order to form a solid head of lettuce, the warm nights have disrupted their growth. The last three weeks have brought warm nights, and the lettuce has suffered because of that.
“When there's not enough of a difference between night and day, the lettuce experiences rapid growth and doesn't fill in,” explained McBride. “So you get a puffy shell of lettuce, which may look fine, but doesn't have the usual weight because it hasn't filled in.” He noted that this kind of weather usually hits the area later in the year, but because it's arrived earlier which has caused some gaps in production. That, in turn, has led to higher prices. While the price for a carton of lettuce was between $11.00 and $12.50 at this point in the season last year, current prices are between $18.50 and $20.00.
“We'll have supplies of lettuce from Salinas through the middle of November, and we expect these weather conditions to continue,” said McBride. “These conditions will be with us for the rest of the year, so the market will be elevated for quite some time.”
For more information:
Mark McBride
Coastline Produce
+1 831 755 1430