The cold weather in the desert growing areas have really put the clamps on growing and harvesting time. The past 2 weeks have been very cold at night and in the morning, allowing farm workers to only get 4-5 hours per day to harvest. Plus, the vegetables just won’t grow with this cold weather. As a result, markets continue to be active on just about all the major vegetable items. Lettuce broccoli, cauliflower, celery, and romaine are all pushed to the breaking point. And that is exactly what will happen as these prices continue. Retails will be changed and business will slow. The good news is that temperatures are slowly warming up.
Trucks  are still plentiful, but rates seem to have bottomed out for now. Fuel costs have bottomed out, as well, so this may be the “low” for trucks for this Winter.
Long range weather in the desert growing regions show gradual warming temperatures, plus not as cold at night. This is certainly good news, so the epidermal peel and other effects from freeze damage should be minimal.

LETTUCE–all the reports we are getting from the shippers is that they are WAY ahead of schedule with their fields. As a result of that, they expect LIGHT supplies of lettuce the entire month of January, and into early February. So, even though the lettuce market is high, we aren’t sure if prices will come down any time soon. Quality is okay for the most part, although expect to see epidermal peel and blister mostly on the outer wrapper leaves.

BROCCOLI–light supplies, especially on crowns. The market on bunch 14s, 18s, and crowns continue very active, but we could see easing by the end of this week. With retail prices set high, business should slow down and prices could come off.

CAULIFLOWER–VERY active market here. Light supplies and empty pipelines will keep this market strong. Still, we don’t encourage you to buy heavy. Once the market starts to come off, it won’t be 50 cents or a dollar at a time! You don’t want to be stuck with high priced cauliflower.

LEAF ITEMS–quite a wide range in prices on red, green, and romaine. In fact, there is as much as a $4-5.00 SPREAD depending upon the area and label on any one of these items. We are seeing epidermal peel and blister on the back sides of leaf, especially romaine. Fortunately, the freeze hasn’t gone too deep, so it is mostly on the outer leaves and the workers are doing a pretty good job of trimming the problem leaves off.

CELERY–prices keep going up. Shippers keep testing the waters every day to see when the buyers say “THA’TS ENOUGH!” There is quite a price spread between the larger size 24s and 30s, and the smaller size 36s. So, if you can switch sizes, and we recommend that if you can, that would give you more stalks/carton to sell. And, truthfully, when the markets get as strong as they are right now, there isn’t much of a difference between a 30 and 36 size. Shippers are also adding $1.50-2.00/box to transfer product from Oxnard to the desert areas to load with the mixers, so that makes thing even MORE expensive.

STRAWBERRIES–just when prices finally started to ease off in California and Mexico, cold, wet weather in Florida is looming. We’ll see how the next 2-3 days shake out, but demand is already picking up out West for our fruit. Quality ranges from excellent to outstanding. Hard, big, full color is what we are seeing.