“As if that wasn’t enough, the region has also been hit with abnormally cold weather throughout January, causing even further delays," he said. "The next challenge on the horizon will be water. The dams in Sinaloa are at historically low levels and water is expected to run out for crops well before the end of the season.”
Manny Girardo, a salesman for Bernardi & Associates, also in Nogales, said the weather issues have caused a lack of supply with no letup in sight. He said virtually all commodities have been adversely impacted.
Speaking specifically of tomatoes, he said: “We are very short on supplies and have been for the last month. This is not typical. We should be rockin’ and rollin’ by now but we aren’t.”
He added that the production coming off the plants is low and he expects no major increase until the end of January at the earliest. Gerardo said a “hot market” has been the result with conventional tomatoes selling in the $30-$35 FOB per carton range, depending upon the variety. He noted that the supply problems extend beyond Sinaloa and include many of the production areas in Sonora and Baja California as well.
Tony Incaviglia, vice president of sales and marketing for GR Fresh, reported similar news from his perch in McAllen, TX. Speaking to The Produce News on Wednesday, Jan. 17, he said volumes of all vegetables are down considerably.
“We are not even close to where we should be,” he said. “Cukes are a big problem. When the weather turns cold, they stop growing.” But, he said eggplant, the squashes and Bell peppers are doing no better. “We’ve just been crawling along; we can’t wait to get up and start running.”
The GR Fresh executive is not expecting volume to reach what would be normal levels until early February. “The weather is starting to warm up in Culiacan so maybe we will see a little more product starting next week — the week of Jan. 22. And then continue to pick up the week of the 29th, but I don’t think we will get into good volumes until February.”
Incaviglia said it has been one issue after another that has wreaked havoc on this season. “People forget that first we were in a drought when we were planting back in August, September and October and then we had too much rain and flooding, which knocked out some early plantings. And then we had cold weather.”
The produce industry veteran said the lost sales of the past month can’t be made up. “The contract business you had is gone and we haven’t had the volume to compete on the open market,” he said. “We will have to wait and see what happens but you aren’t going to get those sales back (from earlier in the season).”
As a point of reference, Incaviglia said the cucumber market on that particular day was $35 to $36 dollars for a carton of supers. “The squash market is crazy — there is not even enough out there to set a price. And if you do find it, it’s going to have quality problem and not meet retailer specs.”
