Market Update

Market Snapshot*

The U.S. Department of Agriculture was reporting the following prices on strawberries from central Florida:

Flats of eight 1-pound containers with lids, medium-large size berries, mostly $20.90.

* Prices from the USDA's Fruit & Vegetable Market News, Dec. 16.

The Shipping Scene

Florida strawberries are now shipping, and growers say volume should continue to ramp up over the next few weeks. Quality of the berries is excellent, though some of the early fruit has been on the small side.

Astin Strawberry Exchange LLC in Plant City has been picking for a few days now, said salesman JR Pierce.

Quality is very good, he said, and the berry size already is improving, after coming up smaller than usual at the beginning of the deal.

Besides the usual festival and treasure varieties, the company ships the new Florida radiance strawberry, which has a lighter red color than the festival, but is firm, has a good shape and taste and comes on about a week earlier, Pierce said.

"It's a nice berry," he said.

So far, strawberry prices have been good for buyers and sellers alike, Pierce said.

"They're not as crazy as last year," he said, when tight supplies resulted in prices near $28 a tray, which impeded sales at retail.

With prices now in the $18-20 range, demand this week was exceeding supply, Pierce said, adding, with strong demand, "we don't need dirt-cheap prices."

Retailers may not be featuring strawberries in Christmas ads, he said, but still, they want to have good-quality berries on their shelves for their customers' holiday parties.

Volume at Astin Strawberry Exchange should be up slightly this season with the addition of about 30 acres of strawberries, he said.

Naples-based Naturipe Farms LLC has a small Florida growing operation that has been producing strawberries for about month, said Craig Moriyama, strawberry product manager.

"Quality has been really nice," he said, but sizing has been off slightly because of warm weather in November.

Over the past two weeks, the weather has been "up and down," with periods of showers and cool conditions followed by rising temperatures.

Strawberries should be available for limited Christmas promotions, he said, but volume was on the verge of picking up.

"You're going to see a lot more volume in the next two to three weeks," Moriyama said.

Naturipe expects to ship the same volume of berries from Florida this season as last, he said. Most of the firm's Florida berries are sold in the Midwest or on the East Coast.

The warm November weather has had a slight impact on December production at Wishnatzki Farms in Plant City, said Gary Wishnatzki, president. But the quality of the berries has been good.

"We've been very pleased with what the berries look like," he said, but he added that bloom likely would be greater if weather had been cooler. Wishnatzki expected volume to catch up in January, weather permitting.

The company is shipping all the major varieties, including festival, treasure, radiance, palomar and a few of the camino real variety. The camino real, which is planted later than the others, should increase in volume after the first of the year and be available to fill potential production gaps of other varieties.

Prices have been slightly lower than usual, in part because of heavy fall production out of California, but that impact already is diminishing, he said.

Overall strawberry volume in Florida should be up this season, said Ted Campbell, executive director of the Plant City-based Florida Strawberry Growers Association.

Although no one keeps precise figures, he estimated that the state will have 9,000 acres of strawberries this season compared with 8,200 to 8,500 last year. Part of the increase is due to growers replacing citrus trees with berries.

Florida produces about 20% of the U.S.-grown strawberries and ships mostly between December and April or May.

The association will complement individual handlers' promotional activities by reaching out to the trade and to food publications, magazines, newspapers and even weather forecasters on the morning news shows to promote strawberries, Campbell said.

The association offers a backroom handling poster and a press kit that lists the nutritional benefits of strawberries and "all the PR items (retailers) need to talk intelligently to their customers," Campbell said.

(By Tom Burfield, Western correspondent for The Packer. The Packer and Red Book Credit Services are part of food360º, a division of Vance Publishing Corp., Lincolnshire, Ill.)

Resources

December 18, 2009