BACK TO THE COOLER
Special Strawberry Market Update
- Sep. 17, 2019
- Market Update
Strawberries:
Recent weather has reeked havoc on the strawberry harvest. Please read this note from one of our berry shippers:
Conventional Strawberries - Last Thursday and Friday's temperatures in the northern growing districts reached the mid to high 90's and our night time temperatures did not drop any lower than the 60's. Although this high heat was short lived, it has had an impact on our crops as the fruit did not have a chance to recover overnight. Combined with the high heats, we are also experiencing rain in the Watsonville area today and anticipate this to cause a significant drop in harvests and raise quality issues. Some ranches had to stop harvesting over the weekend due to the high temperatures. We are still about a month out from Oxnard’s fall crop and expect the next few weeks to be extremely tight with prorates.
Most shippers are not harvesting until next week; any fruit harvested this week would be too weak to make the trip to Spokane. We will get back in the strawberry business as soon as there is quality product to load. Your sales rep will have the latest updates daily.
We regret the situation Mother Nature has dealt us, but as usual, produce people are a resilient lot and will overcome.