Very choppy until the first or second week in June. This is how Mark Vaughan of Fresh Avenue says the lettuce market will look until then. “It’s going to be an unsettled market with significant swings in supply. Supplies may improve for a day or two and then it will fall off again,” he says.
There are a handful of factors leading to this uneven supply situation starting with Yuma, Arizona. “The plan was for shippers and growers to stay in the desert for a while longer than they would like to. However, we had quite a bit of heat over the past five days so that plan is not going work because the lettuce can’t handle that heat,” says Vaughan.
Then there is Salinas, California, a region that was already behind between two to four weeks because of the cool and wet weather early on in the year. “You couldn’t get into the fields and plant like you wanted to,” he says. Add to that the more recent floods four weeks ago and some lettuce was flooded there as well. “The flooding didn’t take out a tremendous amount but it did take out some.”
Strong demand for lettuce
Meanwhile, this is an increasingly high-demand period for lettuce, particularly with the number of holidays in April and May, between Easter, Mother’s Day and Memorial Day. “This is a high vegetable consumption period. April and May are two of the highest demand months generally,” he says. “So all of these factors will make it a choppy market that’s also going to be tight. It may be that supplies are moving better one week and then the next week, fall off completely. That’s what we’re looking at through early June.”
As the weather warms up, this could also change things--not close any gapping or catch up completely, but it could alleviate supply issues somewhat. “You go in early cut lettuce, you won’t get the yields and the costs are higher but if the demand and market are there, you can cut it as you normally would. So if Mother Nature gives us a week or two of warm weather, it could get going,” he says.
All of this means pricing will range on the strong side until the first or second week of June. “As you get into late May-early June, you start seeing some regional produce, such as New Jersey in the northeast, come to the marketplace which will help break the back of this as well,” says Vaughan.
For more information:
Mark Vaughan
Fresh Avenue
Tel: + 1-888-FRESH40
mark.vaughan@freshavenue.com
www.freshavenue.com