As the Mexican asparagus season wraps up, growers are concerned about what to expect coming out of Peru. “The big concern there is the floods and the excessive heat that we’ve experienced the last couple of months. We’re not sure how that asparagus crop is going to shape up,” says Walter Yager of Miami, Fl.-based Alpine Fresh, Inc. While Peruvian volumes will start picking up next week, Yager is anticipating about 15 percent less in volume. “Our farms are located in areas that weren’t hit as far as some other farms. We do see that farms that weren’t affected by the floods were affected by heat,” he says, noting that the heat doesn’t let the plants properly cycle through dormancy. “But the quality of the asparagus should be fine because it’s not raining currently around the farms and they’ll harvest next week. I’m not worried about quality—more just about yield.”
Mexico down, too
This is on top of a low Mexican imported season. While supplies were good, it had a rough start. “We didn’t have a lot of volume from Mexico and we didn’t have a good reason on why,” says Yager. “Supplies were significantly less--about 15 percent less than last year.”
That said, pricing looked solid and continues to look that way. “It’s basically the low 40s right now,” says Yager. “We expect it to get to the mid-high 40s by the end of this week and into next week which is in line with original projections. It’s about the same as last year. It might have been a bit lower last year and a bit better this year.”
For more information:
Walter Yager
Alpine Fresh, Inc.
Tel: +1-305-594-9117
