The big thing produce buyers are going to notice out of Mexico over the next few weeks is a shortage of the items that usually come out the La Paz area at the southern tip of the Baja peninsula during the early part of the Mexican vegetable season, Joe Bernardi, president of Bernardi & Associates in Nogales, AZ, said Nov. 17.

That is because a hurricane in September hit the La Paz deal hard and “totally knocked it out,” he said.

But the Culiacan area in the state of Sinaloa in mainland West Mexico is the main producing area for vegetables out of Mexico during the winter, and although it has been an unusually active hurricane season in Mexico this fall, “both in Baja and in mainland Mexico,” the Culiacan area was fortunate to have not been severely affected, Bernardi said. “It looks like Culiacan got passed by that last hurricane,” Hurricane Vance, which made landfall in Sinaloa Nov. 5, “and really dodged a big bullet there,” Bernardi said.

While “we are seeing the effects” now, during the early season, of the various hurricanes that have affected Mexico this fall, “once the main Culiacan crops get going, I think things will go along pretty normal going forward from there,” he said.

“I expect to see the early tomato items to start up out of Culiacan the middle of December to late December, and then really pick up the middle of January, like normal,” he added. “As long as we avoid any major weather problems from here going forward, I think we should have a pretty good crop of product with promotable volumes and good quality. That is what we are looking forward to” not only on tomatoes but on all items.

For Bernardi & Associates, “our main items continue to be all the tomato category, and then Bell peppers and cucumbers,” in terms of the volume moved. In addition, “we handle everything else” that comes through Nogales, he said. “We handle the squashes and the chili peppers, the melons and all the rest. But tomatoes, Romas, Bells and cucumbers are the four biggest items for us.”

Bernardi & Associates is a full-service brokerage company, he said. “We are on-the-ground brokers in multiple locations nationwide. We have on-ground offices in Nogales, which is our headquarters, in McAllen, TX, and in Fort Meyers, FL, along with our California offices in San Diego and in Turlock.”

Having offices at those locations allows Bernardi & Associates personnel to be “on the ground at shipping point year-round for the items that we handle,” Bernardi said. “We have quality-control inspectors at all sites, and we are inspecting the product before it goes on the trucks.”

The company adds value to the product for its customers nationwide through its buying power and by having “eyes and ears on the ground to give customers the best information that they can have,” he said.

Nationwide consumption of the items Bernardi & Associates handles has been steady in volume and increasing “not rapidly, but just at a steady rate,” Bernardi said. In the foodservice sector, “more and more restaurants are trying to do fresher items” which, for the produce industry, “is always going to mean more consumption, he said. From quick-serve to fast-casual, foodservice operators are “really pushing for fresher, greener, healthier menu items, and that is always going to include fresh produce.”

At retail, “you’re going to see more of the ready-to-eat items,” and retailers are “finding more and more ways to get fresh produce and keep it appealing and looking good and tasting good,” he said. “I think that is going to help us increase consumption as well.”