Deluge in the East clouds crop conditions and availability
Deluge in the East clouds crop conditions and availability
A rash of extraordinarily wet weather in June from New York south through the mid-Atlantic region has caused spotty crop conditions and uncertain supplies are predicted through the balance of the summer, which is when many of those states typically enjoy a surge in interest from consumers looking for locally grown products.
In New York, Steve Reiners, an associate professor of horticulture sciences at Cornell University, said that many of the fresh-market vegetable production regions were swamped by heavy rains that fell the last week of June, with the Capital area between Syracuse and Albany especially affected. The Southern Tier region, which borders Pennsylvania, also suffered extensive damage to its produce crops.
The result, he said, will be spotty supplies and shortages of nearly every fresh-market vegetable throughout the rest of the year.
"The past three days have been especially bad," he told The Produce News June 29. "We'll see localized shortages as a result. It's not a real positive picture."
He did say that the western part of the state between Geneva and Buffalo did not experience an overabundance of rain, and in fact "could use a little more rain," so production from that region should be unaffected.
If there is a silver lining in those dark rain clouds, it is the timing of the deluge, which was early enough for growers to salvage some of the season. "A few years ago we had heavy rains in late July and early August, and that was very bad," he said. "At this stage, it is still early enough to replant some of the vine crops like zucchini, squash and eggplant. But early tomatoes, peppers, potatoes, onions and greens" are all but lost for the season in the heavily affected areas.
About 300 acres -- a third of the sweet corn crop -- were underwater as of June 29, said John Gill, co-owner of Gill Corn Farms in Hurley, NY. The land was ripped up and it was too early to tell whether some of the corn will come back up. Mr. Gill estimated that about one-half of the flooded acres can be salvaged.
Last year's weather also caused problems, said Mr. Gill. A flood in April wiped out nearly 100 acres, but that was before planting season.
Bill Nardelli of Nardelli Bros. in Cedarville, NJ, said July 3, "Honestly, we, and speaking for the whole area, were very fortunate. Overall in the southern end of New Jersey, we missed torrential downpours and floodings."
Mr. Nardelli said that the area had received six or seven inches of rain in the last 10 days. "That slows us a day or two. Last week it slowed us," he said. "But we were fortunate not to have deluges like they had to the west in Pennsylvania or south in Virginia."
He said that West Chester, PA, on the west side of suburban Philadelphia, "got six or seven inches of rain in one crack."
Mr. Nardelli said that the areas hit by heavy rains were separated by two- or three-mile spans. "We are in good shape," he said of Nardelli Bros. In early July, the firm was shipping beans, squash pickles and peppers.
"Quality is good," Mr. Nardelli continued. "We needed rain early on and the ground soaked it up pretty good."
Some growers north of Cedarville, in Vineland and Hammonton, "got some of those bad rains and have some trouble with product. But stuff we're harvesting now and that's coming on looks real good. We will move ahead normally. We are harvesting beans, and that's one of the most ticklish crops to pick. But we only missed one day in the last 10" to pick beans.
Richard Papen of Papen Farms in Dover, DE, said rain "hurt us quite a bit." Papen vegetable farms received 7.5 inches of rain beginning with receiving four inches on June 24, and continuing with an inch-and-a-half on June 26. The Papens particularly suffered on beans. "We lost two or three fields. Beans can't stand wet feet."
The rain also "hurt a little bit on cabbage. We're starting to pick corn now," Mr. Papen said July 3. Delaware's corn crop should not suffer too much from the rain, which did some harm by leaching nitrogen out of the soil. "On the whole, we're used to this kind of stuff," Mr. Papen said. "We were terribly dry up until then, so we needed rain. Not quite that much."
Steve Dandrea of Dandrea Produce in Landisville, NJ, said that New Jersey's blueberry crop "has been exceptional this year. We don't have the volume we thought we would have, but the [good] sizing made up for it."
The New Jersey blueberry harvest began about June 15 and will run to July 26 or 28, he said.
Mr. Dandrea confirmed "it has rained. The problem has not been the rain contributing to some berries being, in fact, wet." A larger problem is a lack of labor to harvest New Jersey blueberries. Without adequate numbers of workers, growers "got behind on their crop. That caused problems. The rain was intermittent at best. The labor supply is a problem and it will be for the foreseeable future."
Blueberry growers in North Carolina, New Jersey and Michigan are all having problems finding adequate field labor, Mr. Dandrea said. Sweet corn and cherry growers "industrywide are having problems and it's getting worse." Mr. Dandrea said that New Jersey "cabbage, bell peppers, all the squashes, pickles and beans all have exceptional quality."
When asked about the early-summer Eastern potato deal, Mark Hodson of Thomas E. Moore Inc. in Dover, DE, responded, "That is an open-ended question. In North Carolina, we're trying to get through it. Some sheds were hit harder than others. There are complications due to that. There are some isolated problems with product arriving with breakdown due to too much moisture."
There were some potato growers around Weeksville, NC, that had no problem with the rain, he added, thus a selective buyer can find good potatoes from North Carolina. Precooling is very important to high-quality potatoes.
"Virginia has not had the same type of problems," Mr. Hodson said. "We have gotten to that and it's not as dramatic as the North Carolina issues now."
On July 3, Mr. Hodson said that Thomas E. Moore was shipping some early Delaware potatoes. "At the end of last week, we shipped reds [from Delaware] on a very limited scale. Other sheds will begin at the end of this week going into next. Because of rain in Delaware, some guys put off harvest for a week. Most were going to begin in the week of July 10. Now they will hold off until the 17th. That is a smart thing. In North Carolina, for example, these guys will allow time to dictate what they salvage and what they don't." Such actions, he said, "will determine trends in the market going into Virginia and Delaware."
Delaware potatoes, quality-wise, "I think will be OK," Mr. Hodson said. "What we don't need now is having rain here. We don't need rain." The outcome, then, of the Delaware potato deal "depends on Mother Nature over the next week or so. If we do not get as much rain, we'll be fine if there is nothing else to complicate it."
North Carolina potato growers going into the week of June 19 had three to five inches of rain atop heavy rain the week before. In the week ending June 17, Camden and Weeksville had more than eight inches of rain. Heat in the low 90s in early July is compounding North Carolina growers' problems.
The Eastern Shore in the June 25-27 time frame had major storms, which affected different areas differently. Mr. Hodson said that some "got an inch or an inch-and-a-half of rain every third day. It was just enough to keep them out of the field. It got them behind and then you lose momentum, too. The deal was fairly strong coming out of Florida, but when you're out of pocket for five days, it slows down the buying habits."
Mr. Hodson said that the potato market on July 3 for "A" white potatoes was starting at $8 for 50-pound bags. Chefs, size A and larger were $10 per 50 pounds. Red A size were $14; Red Bs were $18 and Yellows were $18-$20. "Those are very good prices, if we can get the product."
Tom Wright, manager of the Laurel Farmers Auction in Laurel, DE, said that field damage on the Eastern Shore "depends where you are. Some areas got hit pretty hard and other areas got very little. Right here at my house I had nine inches of rain. Less than five miles away, they only had two. Ten miles from here in the other direction in Maryland, there is an area in Dorchester County that had as high as 16 inches. It just depended where the storms formed and where you were located."
Mr. Wright said that the soil near his home is sandy. After receiving nine inches of rain on Sunday, June 25, his yard absorbed the rain and no puddles were there by Tuesday.
He said that because it has been dry on the Eastern Shore, water tables are low so the rain on sandy soil didn't stay. The melon crop was also "still in that young stage so it could handle the water. The humidity and all the wetness here could develop into disease problems. We won't know for another week or week-and-a-half, anyway. We're not a disaster area. We probably have 75 percent of the acreage that is still in good shape."
In New Jersey, Mr. Nardelli said, "We are underway full-blown on squash, pickles, beans and cucumbers. We're just starting on pepper with some volume. We won't be at peak on peppers for two more weeks, but we're harvesting decent supplies."
He added, "We're in the heat of harvest for all else, specifying red cabbage, Savoy cabbage and Chinese cabbage. "The leaf deal is finished for the most part. New Jersey will ship items like Romaine and escarole again in September. We are in good production on dry crops. The guys are spot picking a few peaches and the quality on that looks real, real good."
Mr. Wright said the Laurel auction is set to open July 11. "We should have a few watermelons and Sugar Babies and there should be a few cantaloupes." He said that it is hard to pick an opening date from year to year.
Of growers of melons, he said, "There are always a few early ones. No matter what, you might as well throw a dart at a calendar as a good way to pick an opening date."
This will mark the 67th year for the operation of the Laurel auction. "There was only one year we didn't come out in the black. That was '66 or '67 when we had three or four tropical storms. Literally, you could float watermelons out of the field. When the water dried, disease came. I remember slogging through the fields with a tractor and wagon. You were OK as long as you didn't stop. If you did, you went right on down."
In New York, Steve Reiners, an associate professor of horticulture sciences at Cornell University, said that many of the fresh-market vegetable production regions were swamped by heavy rains that fell the last week of June, with the Capital area between Syracuse and Albany especially affected. The Southern Tier region, which borders Pennsylvania, also suffered extensive damage to its produce crops.
The result, he said, will be spotty supplies and shortages of nearly every fresh-market vegetable throughout the rest of the year.
"The past three days have been especially bad," he told The Produce News June 29. "We'll see localized shortages as a result. It's not a real positive picture."
He did say that the western part of the state between Geneva and Buffalo did not experience an overabundance of rain, and in fact "could use a little more rain," so production from that region should be unaffected.
If there is a silver lining in those dark rain clouds, it is the timing of the deluge, which was early enough for growers to salvage some of the season. "A few years ago we had heavy rains in late July and early August, and that was very bad," he said. "At this stage, it is still early enough to replant some of the vine crops like zucchini, squash and eggplant. But early tomatoes, peppers, potatoes, onions and greens" are all but lost for the season in the heavily affected areas.
About 300 acres -- a third of the sweet corn crop -- were underwater as of June 29, said John Gill, co-owner of Gill Corn Farms in Hurley, NY. The land was ripped up and it was too early to tell whether some of the corn will come back up. Mr. Gill estimated that about one-half of the flooded acres can be salvaged.
Last year's weather also caused problems, said Mr. Gill. A flood in April wiped out nearly 100 acres, but that was before planting season.
Bill Nardelli of Nardelli Bros. in Cedarville, NJ, said July 3, "Honestly, we, and speaking for the whole area, were very fortunate. Overall in the southern end of New Jersey, we missed torrential downpours and floodings."
Mr. Nardelli said that the area had received six or seven inches of rain in the last 10 days. "That slows us a day or two. Last week it slowed us," he said. "But we were fortunate not to have deluges like they had to the west in Pennsylvania or south in Virginia."
He said that West Chester, PA, on the west side of suburban Philadelphia, "got six or seven inches of rain in one crack."
Mr. Nardelli said that the areas hit by heavy rains were separated by two- or three-mile spans. "We are in good shape," he said of Nardelli Bros. In early July, the firm was shipping beans, squash pickles and peppers.
"Quality is good," Mr. Nardelli continued. "We needed rain early on and the ground soaked it up pretty good."
Some growers north of Cedarville, in Vineland and Hammonton, "got some of those bad rains and have some trouble with product. But stuff we're harvesting now and that's coming on looks real good. We will move ahead normally. We are harvesting beans, and that's one of the most ticklish crops to pick. But we only missed one day in the last 10" to pick beans.
Richard Papen of Papen Farms in Dover, DE, said rain "hurt us quite a bit." Papen vegetable farms received 7.5 inches of rain beginning with receiving four inches on June 24, and continuing with an inch-and-a-half on June 26. The Papens particularly suffered on beans. "We lost two or three fields. Beans can't stand wet feet."
The rain also "hurt a little bit on cabbage. We're starting to pick corn now," Mr. Papen said July 3. Delaware's corn crop should not suffer too much from the rain, which did some harm by leaching nitrogen out of the soil. "On the whole, we're used to this kind of stuff," Mr. Papen said. "We were terribly dry up until then, so we needed rain. Not quite that much."
Steve Dandrea of Dandrea Produce in Landisville, NJ, said that New Jersey's blueberry crop "has been exceptional this year. We don't have the volume we thought we would have, but the [good] sizing made up for it."
The New Jersey blueberry harvest began about June 15 and will run to July 26 or 28, he said.
Mr. Dandrea confirmed "it has rained. The problem has not been the rain contributing to some berries being, in fact, wet." A larger problem is a lack of labor to harvest New Jersey blueberries. Without adequate numbers of workers, growers "got behind on their crop. That caused problems. The rain was intermittent at best. The labor supply is a problem and it will be for the foreseeable future."
Blueberry growers in North Carolina, New Jersey and Michigan are all having problems finding adequate field labor, Mr. Dandrea said. Sweet corn and cherry growers "industrywide are having problems and it's getting worse." Mr. Dandrea said that New Jersey "cabbage, bell peppers, all the squashes, pickles and beans all have exceptional quality."
When asked about the early-summer Eastern potato deal, Mark Hodson of Thomas E. Moore Inc. in Dover, DE, responded, "That is an open-ended question. In North Carolina, we're trying to get through it. Some sheds were hit harder than others. There are complications due to that. There are some isolated problems with product arriving with breakdown due to too much moisture."
There were some potato growers around Weeksville, NC, that had no problem with the rain, he added, thus a selective buyer can find good potatoes from North Carolina. Precooling is very important to high-quality potatoes.
"Virginia has not had the same type of problems," Mr. Hodson said. "We have gotten to that and it's not as dramatic as the North Carolina issues now."
On July 3, Mr. Hodson said that Thomas E. Moore was shipping some early Delaware potatoes. "At the end of last week, we shipped reds [from Delaware] on a very limited scale. Other sheds will begin at the end of this week going into next. Because of rain in Delaware, some guys put off harvest for a week. Most were going to begin in the week of July 10. Now they will hold off until the 17th. That is a smart thing. In North Carolina, for example, these guys will allow time to dictate what they salvage and what they don't." Such actions, he said, "will determine trends in the market going into Virginia and Delaware."
Delaware potatoes, quality-wise, "I think will be OK," Mr. Hodson said. "What we don't need now is having rain here. We don't need rain." The outcome, then, of the Delaware potato deal "depends on Mother Nature over the next week or so. If we do not get as much rain, we'll be fine if there is nothing else to complicate it."
North Carolina potato growers going into the week of June 19 had three to five inches of rain atop heavy rain the week before. In the week ending June 17, Camden and Weeksville had more than eight inches of rain. Heat in the low 90s in early July is compounding North Carolina growers' problems.
The Eastern Shore in the June 25-27 time frame had major storms, which affected different areas differently. Mr. Hodson said that some "got an inch or an inch-and-a-half of rain every third day. It was just enough to keep them out of the field. It got them behind and then you lose momentum, too. The deal was fairly strong coming out of Florida, but when you're out of pocket for five days, it slows down the buying habits."
Mr. Hodson said that the potato market on July 3 for "A" white potatoes was starting at $8 for 50-pound bags. Chefs, size A and larger were $10 per 50 pounds. Red A size were $14; Red Bs were $18 and Yellows were $18-$20. "Those are very good prices, if we can get the product."
Tom Wright, manager of the Laurel Farmers Auction in Laurel, DE, said that field damage on the Eastern Shore "depends where you are. Some areas got hit pretty hard and other areas got very little. Right here at my house I had nine inches of rain. Less than five miles away, they only had two. Ten miles from here in the other direction in Maryland, there is an area in Dorchester County that had as high as 16 inches. It just depended where the storms formed and where you were located."
Mr. Wright said that the soil near his home is sandy. After receiving nine inches of rain on Sunday, June 25, his yard absorbed the rain and no puddles were there by Tuesday.
He said that because it has been dry on the Eastern Shore, water tables are low so the rain on sandy soil didn't stay. The melon crop was also "still in that young stage so it could handle the water. The humidity and all the wetness here could develop into disease problems. We won't know for another week or week-and-a-half, anyway. We're not a disaster area. We probably have 75 percent of the acreage that is still in good shape."
In New Jersey, Mr. Nardelli said, "We are underway full-blown on squash, pickles, beans and cucumbers. We're just starting on pepper with some volume. We won't be at peak on peppers for two more weeks, but we're harvesting decent supplies."
He added, "We're in the heat of harvest for all else, specifying red cabbage, Savoy cabbage and Chinese cabbage. "The leaf deal is finished for the most part. New Jersey will ship items like Romaine and escarole again in September. We are in good production on dry crops. The guys are spot picking a few peaches and the quality on that looks real, real good."
Mr. Wright said the Laurel auction is set to open July 11. "We should have a few watermelons and Sugar Babies and there should be a few cantaloupes." He said that it is hard to pick an opening date from year to year.
Of growers of melons, he said, "There are always a few early ones. No matter what, you might as well throw a dart at a calendar as a good way to pick an opening date."
This will mark the 67th year for the operation of the Laurel auction. "There was only one year we didn't come out in the black. That was '66 or '67 when we had three or four tropical storms. Literally, you could float watermelons out of the field. When the water dried, disease came. I remember slogging through the fields with a tractor and wagon. You were OK as long as you didn't stop. If you did, you went right on down."
