I had a great visit to Georgia May 25-29 visiting with truckers at various truck stops along Interstate 75, as well as on the Atlanta State Farmers Market. Over the next several weeks I’ll be posting some photos and interviews with owner operators and drivers from the Georgia trip.
Additionally I met with a number of shippers of vegetables, watermelons and peaches in central Georgia.
The first part of the week was the coldest I’d ever seen over years in March when in Georiga. There were a couple of heavy frosts and damage to produce will really depend upon a lot of things. For example, I talked with one water melon shipper who received no frost damage, but another shipper located only 20 miles to the north lost his watermelon plants that had only been in the ground a week or so……A bean shipper told me he had some leaf burn on plants…..Peach shippers should know in a week or two if the crop will be affected by the cold……One blueberry shipper said there will be losses for the fruit, which starts in a few weeks. However, it was too early to assess damage…..Overall, I think your Georgia spring and summer loading opportunities won’t be reduced by all that much.
I visited Southeastern Georgia several weeks ago and have followed up that visit with calls to get a better ideal of how Vidalia onion shipments are shaping up. Vidalia has got a lot rain in recent weeks, but decent shipments are still expected.
Loadings in any volume won’t be happening until after mid April. We’ll have to wait and see until the harvest gets going, whether there’s going to be any disease problems from rains, such as downy mildew.
Vidalia typically ships fresh onions until early June, and then continues shipments out of storage into late August or early September. However, sweet onions can be pretty “ify” coming out of storage and tend not to store as well as other onions.
There are nearly 12,600 acres of Vidalia onions planted this year, which is only one percent less than than 2012. — Bill Martin
Greens from central and south Georgia – grossing about $2400 to New York City.