Supplies of sweet potatoes across the U.S. are good. “For the industry in general, there’s not an overabundance of supply but I think there’s enough to get us through the summer months until we start our fresh crop,” says Larelle Miller of Quail H Farms.
In California, the bulk of California sweet potatoes are grown in Merced County though Bakersfield also has production. The largest sweet potato-producing state is North Carolina with over 50 percent of the producing acreage in the U.S. The balance of the acreage is represented by California, Arkansas, Mississippi and Louisiana.
That said, retail movement seems to have slowed somewhat since February. “It’s not a huge slowdown but movement is off by about 10 percent over previous years,” she says. It’s a different picture from last year when supplies began running quite low by June-July.
Stronger pricing
Part of the slower movement is attributed to higher FOBs--ones that are higher than this time last year. “We need to maintain higher FOBS because otherwise, we wouldn’t be in business. With this, we won’t be going into a shortage position as we go into summer,” says Miller. “I think pricing will go up a few dollars by May-June because we’ll still be packing out of storage and our pack-outs will be down a bit. With reduced pack outs and to get the best return to the grower, we have to make sure we’re marketing at a profit for everybody.”
Looking ahead at the 2023 crop, Miller says it’s a little too early to tell right now. California started planting hotbeds at the end of February and into March. “Then we got a lot of cold weather and a lot of wet and windy weather. Our hotbed production isn’t as great as we want it to be which affects the planting of the 2023 crop,” she says. “We won’t get into the hotbeds to start planting until the end of this month or the first week of May. We’ll have a better idea of how the planting goes then. If we have decent weather between May-July--there should be a decent crop.”
For more information:
Larelle Miller
Quail H. Farms
Tel: +1 (209) 394-8001
[email protected]
