The current Peruvian asparagus season is proving to be interesting for Jeff Friedman, president and sales manager at CarbAmericas Inc. He and Vice President Dan Pollak spoke with The Produce News to provide their comments and observations.

Friedman said there are ample volumes of Peruvian asparagus available to the marketplace, and the United States continues to be the prime destination. Looking at agricultural crop production in Peru, Friedman said, “In general, many growers started to plant more grapes, avocados and citrus. It is true that Peru did start to plant some new fields as well as more blueberries. Asparagus volume did not go up a huge percentage because older fields of asparagus were disked up and planted with another crop. So both new and old crop just canceled each other out.”

“We sell Peru pretty much all year long,” said Pollak. “We just have lower volumes. Our better time of year for Peru asparagus is May through Jan. 15.” He said the company, one of the first to import Peruvian asparagus to the United States, has worked hard to build a solid reputation. “We have a strong relationship formed with several growers whom we continue to work with on consignment,” he went on to say. “For those other growers we purchase from, it is all negotiation, each transaction.”

CarbAmericas and its procurement/ownership team continually travels to Peru to meet with growers and suppliers to solidify personal relationships. “Exporting/importing goes hand in hand,” said Friedman. “The grower needs to be comfortable in trusting the company he is sending his product to. And the importer needs to trust and feel comfortable with quality and consistency and that grower is going to do their job in getting product to its destination — the consumer. We have QC people in New York, California and Miami always looking at product and giving feedback both to sales as well as back to the growers. We have proven to all our growers that we know how to handle product, solve problems if they occur and work as a team to get the best return as possible.”

Friedman turned his analysis to production and market conditions this season. “So far, this season, and currently speaking, has been a tough time for Peru asparagus,” he said. “Due to weather patterns and conditions, Peru has been exporting to the USA mostly small and standard size asparagus. The small market has been very poor because Mexico is also producing a lot of smalls. Granted, the standard market has been held in check because of Mexican production and the lack of national ad commitments by importers. Ad business will stimulate demand and can create a good or better spot market. But this season importers and retailers have not ventured out to run large-scale promotions due to Peru’s inconsistency. Thus, the market has been flat with very little demand from the end users/consumers. Quality so far has been good.”

Friedman also provided his comments about pricing. “The market in 2014 at this time was high $20s, low $30s, so importers were not aggressive in giving out promotions. So demand has been fair at best,” he said. As of July 30, Friedman said pricing had been falling for the past two to three days. “We were $24-25 on standard, and we are down to $22,” he stated. “Pricing is always volatile coming out of Peru. Some growers are a bit flexible and allow promotions during peak times, while others want an f.o.b. firm price and want to play the spot market 100 percent of the time. Peru has other areas in the world to sell asparagus and so choose to try and get a better return to the farm. But the only country in the world that can take volume and move product is the United States. Air freight is a major issue as always: too few planes, too many planes, planes are diverted. There is a whole variety of excuses that we hear throughout the season.”