Archive For The “Trucking Reports” Category
Remaining U.S. fresh apples remaining to be shipped on November 1 were 12 percent less than the same time last year, according to the first storage report of the season from the U.S. Apple Association of Falls Church, VA.
Fresh apple remaining in storage for shipping on November 1 were 117.5 million (42-pound) cartons, 12 percent less than the inventories the same time a year ago.
Processing holdings were 45 million cartons, 6 percent less than the same time last year. Total apples in storage on November 1 were 162.5 million cartons, 10 percent less than a year ago and 4 percent below the 5-year average for that date.
The U.S. Apple fresh inventories on November 1, with percent change compared with a year ago:
- Gala: 24.2 million cartons, down 15 percent ; and
- Red delicious: 21.17 million cartons, down 24 percent;
- Honeycrisp: 15.34 million cartons, up 3.6 percent;
- Granny smith: 13.37 million cartons, down 15 percent;
- Golden delicious: 5.01 million cartons, down 38 percent.
- Cosmic Crisp: 1.631 million cartons, up 533 percent.
Lower Florida orange and grapefruit are expected this season compared to a year ago.
The USDA’s prediction of 57 million boxes of Florida oranges and 4.5 million boxes of Florida grapefruit means a 15 percent decrease in Florida orange production and 7 percent decrease in Florida grapefruit shipments compared to the 2019-20 season,
However, specialty citrus volumes is expected to be up slightly this season over last with 1.1 million boxes forecasted.
Much of the production drop is expect to be from for juice, rather than the fresh market, according to Florida growers.
DLF International of Fort Pierce, FL, expects to ship 1.6 million cartons of citrus for the fresh market, which is about 15 percent more than the previous season.
DLF produces about 90 percent oranges, but is looking to increase its grapefruit program, to possibly 30 percent of its product line.
Shipping got underway September 20 and is expected to finish in July, although grapefruit should wrap up in April because it doesn’t use cold storage.
Valencias do well in cold storage for part of June and July with barely 1 percent discards once pulled out and resorted
Duda Farm Fresh Fresh Foods of Oveido, FL., reports company’s navel crop is expected to show larger sizes and bigger volume than last season.
The company’s grapefruit crop should be very similar to last year, with the potential for greater packouts and potentially slightly more volume.
The firm’s juice orange crop is expected to be very similar to last season, with potentially lighter overall volume. One bright spot is specialty citrus.
The company began shipping grapefruit, specialties and oranges The third week of October, and navels began Nov. 2.
Grapefruit shipments will peak in January and February and continue through March. Specialties began their peak before Thanksgiving and will continue with peak volume through Christmas.
Florida Classic Growers of Dundee, FL., started packing its first Florida citrus in October with Florida hamlin juice oranges, fallglo and early pride tangerines, as well as navel oranges.
By mid-November, tango tangerines were in full force.
New in 2020 is a partnership with Riverfront Packing Co., the Packers of Indian River and Quality Fruit Packers Inc. Good volumes of grapefruit are expected through mid-March.
After the first of the year, Florida Classic will transition from early season orange varieties to its valencia orange crop, which should be in good supply and available to the end of May.
The honey tangerine crop will start then too, running through early March.
Seald Sweet LL of Vero Beach, FL., expects similar volume of Florida volume compared with last season. The company began packing in late October and was in peak volume by mid-November.
Near perfect growing conditions have been going on in the desert areas of California and Arizona. The Yuma, AZ forecast has highs in the low to mid 70s going well into December. If this continues there should be good, steady lettuce shipments with nice quality.
Coastline Family Farms of Salinas, CA launched its iceberg lettuce season in Yuma the first week of November, but other commodities, including broccoli, cauliflower, mixed leaf, romaine, green leaf and red leaf did not in Salinas until the last few days. The company gets started in the Brawley, CA the week of November 30th.
Boskovich Farms Inc. of Oxnard, CA will ship lettuce out of Yuma, as well as Oxnard this winter, but just about all of its other winter commodities will continue to be shipped exclusively from Oxnard.
The shipper grows green onions, radishes, leeks, beets, kales and Brussels sprouts in Mexico starting in November but will ship them from Oxnard.
Organic greens such as chards, kale and celery are grown in San Luis, Mexico, just south of Yuma.
The company’s Yuma iceberg lettuce program will kicked off the week of November 16 and continues through March.
Boskovich Farms will grow and ship celery, cabbages, romaine lettuce, napa, bok choy, parsleys, cilantro and spinach in Oxnard.
The company reports there will be a bit of a gap in November when Salinas is ending and before the desert gets fully geared.
the week of Oct. 18, which will run th
Peter Rabbit Farms of Coachella, CA, started its bell pepper and leaf lettuce in October and will continue through Christmas. The operation reports a few more green and red bell peppers this season. This will be the first year for its lettuce crop, so supplies are expected to be tight.
North Shore Greenhouses Inc., Thermal, CA is at it busiest time of year with its Roasting Mix which is a blend of rosemary, sage and thyme.
Prime Time International of Coachella, CA started harvest of green bell peppers, eggplant and chili peppers in the desert in October, while beans got underway the first week of November, followed by red bell peppers a couple of weeks later.
The company also started its hothouse production of red, yellow and orange bell peppers in Jalisco, Mexico, and began harvesting elongated red, yellow and orange bell peppers in Vizcaino in Baja California.
Forever Fresh of Wilimington, DL reports anticipating good volumes of Chilean cherries and stone fruit as well as Peruvian grapes this season.
The importer notes its first two Chilean fruits this season are cherries and stone fruit and are looking “pretty good.” The Chilean cherry season is underway, and Chile’s total exports are expected to increase. The stone fruit season has just started.
Chile-based Garcés fruit – an owner of Forever Fresh is one of the world’s largest cherry exporters. It has been shipping steady volumes into the U.S. over at least a decade. The company may see a gradual increase in shipments to the U.S. as Garcés’ new plantings come into production, but there may not be a rise in total volumes from Chile despite an expected production increase of up to 15 percent. This is because the volumes out of Chile to the U.S. have been decreasing every year, with the volumes increasing in Chile.
The additional volume probably will be exported to Asia rather than coming to the U.S.
The stone fruit harvest started in mid-November, with the first arrivals in the U.S. set for early December. Additionally, there will be larger volumes of newer varieties – especially of plums and nectarines – from trees planted in Chile over the past five to six years.
The Peruvian grape season is underway, with expectations of a significant increase in volume over last year. There will be an increase in total production in Peru, although it will vary between different areas, but in general expectations are for around a 20 percent increase.
Forever Fresh’s first containers of Peruvian grapes arrived in mid-November, with the peak season set to begin in December.
Peruvian table grape exports should increase 2 percent for the 2021 season compared to a year ago, according to a projection by the USDA. This would place exports at 412,000 metric tons (MT).
This is a contrast to estimates from the Peruvian table grape association Provid in October forecasting exports would rise by 16 percent to 56 million box equivalents to 8.2 kilos, which would be 426,000MT.
The USDA reports the U.S. was the top export destination in the 2019 calendar year, accounting for 38 percent of total exports. Other markets are the Netherlands and Hong Kong with 15 and 10 percent of the export market share, respectively.
Fresh table grapes are one of the top produce exports by value for Peru and 2020 export value expected to reach $1 billion.
Peruvian grape exports to the U.S. peak in December and January due to seasonally higher prices. Between October 2019 and March 2020, Peru became the leading grape supplier to China accounting for 48 percent of market share. Total table grape production in Peru is forecast to reach 665,000 MT in 2020/2021 (October-September), a two percent increase over the previous year.
Favorable weather conditions, good water supply and growing demand are driving this increase. Peru has a dry coast with a range of temperatures and over 12 hours of sunlight per day, year-round, which makes it an ideal region for grape production. These conditions combined with precision irrigation enables Peru to mature vines 55 percent faster than in neighboring countries, the USDA report said.
Grape production is mainly located in Ica (41 percent) and Piura (22 percent), and the total area under cultivation is estimated at 31,500 hectares. Harvesting season in Peru begins in late October and ends in April. The Red Globe variety dominates production, as it remains popular in the growing Chinese market. However, producers are shifting toward higher value varieties to supply other markets.
Record pistachio shipments are expected to take place starting this fall.
The American Pistachio Growers of Fresno, CA believe the current harvest could hit the one billion-pound mark for the first time in California.
An advertising campaign focuses on pistachios as a “complete protein,” joining the ranks of plant proteins that include quinoa, chickpeas and soybeans that are popular among vegetarians and consumers wishing to move away from animal proteins, according to a news release.
Beginning in mid-November and continuing through next summer, ads will appear in 44 U.S. television markets. American Pistachio Growers is sponsoring New Year’s Eve countdowns in Las Vegas and Dallas.
Pistachios rank sixth in terms of value among California commodities, at $1.94 billion, according to 2019 data from the California Department of Food and Agriculture, and are the second in export commodities, at $1.1 billion.
A Rabobank report projects bearing pistachio acreage could reach 372,000 acres by 2024-25, a 30 percent increase from the most recent season.
American Pistachio Growers represents more than 800 growers and processors in California, Arizona and New Mexico.
A good season for Chilean blueberry production and exports to the U.S. through the winter months is anticipated by industry observers.
Last Land Farms SA reports the U.S. market continues to be a major market of the Chilean “blues”, and volume should be similar to the 2019-20 season.
The Chilean Blueberry Committee estimates fresh exports for the current season at 111,500 tons, very close in volume to 2019-20 and 2 percent higher than the previous season.
For 2019-20, Chile’s peak volume months for blueberry shipments to the U.S. were December, January and February. Chilean exporters sent about one third (32 percent) of the country’s annual shipments by value to the U.S. in January last season, followed by February (27 percent) and December (23 percent).
Total Chilean blueberry exports to the U.S. in the 2019-20 season (September 2019 through August 2020) were valued at $209.7 million, off from $269.9 million the previous season and down nearly $110 million from 2017-18.
Chile’s share of total U.S. blueberry imports was 24 percent in 2019, down from 33 percent in 2018 and 44 percent in 2015.
Peru has seen its share of value of U.S. blueberry imports grow from 9 percent in 2015 to 41 percent in 2019.
ACF Global Sourcing reports its fresh blueberry season should be around 112,000 tons, but if markets during the last weeks of December, January and February show unexpected returns and those are favorable, the total exports could increase 5 to 10 percent. The company has about 15,000 to 20,000 tons which could go to either fresh or frozen depending on markets.
Florida fall produce shipments are building in volume and it is shaping up to be a relatively normal shipping season.
Sweet corn, leafy greens, peppers and other fall-winter crops are just getting underway and light volumes of strawberries started in early November.
Florida ships a wide variety of products in a relatively tight geographic area and is in full swing in fall and winter when most of the rest of the U.S. is dormant although the Sunshine State’s biggest volume is typically in April and May.
Lipman Family Farms of Immokalee, FL., grows vegetables and tomatoes in Florida’s open fields but also in greenhouses in Nebraska, Canada and Mexico.
Strawberries
In November 2019, Florida’s strawberries were just getting started, shipping 2.2 million pounds compared with California’s 69.5 million pounds.
But Florida stepped in December with 31.6 million pounds as California started its dip with 20.5 million.
Mexico, however, shipped 19.3 million pounds into the U.S. in November and 44.7 million pounds in December.
Wish Farms of Plant City, FL., will begin strawberry shipments in late November and ramp up volume in December in time for the holidays.
Corn
Florida has little, if any, domestic competition for its sweet corn crop in the fall and winter.
The USDA notes 24.5 million pounds of corn were shipped from Florida in November 2019, compared to 3.7 million pounds from Southern California and 8.4 million pounds from Georgia — the only other two states that ship corn in November.
In 2019, Florida was the only state shipping corn in December and earlier in the year, January through March.
As far as imports, Mexico shipped 7.4 million pounds of corn in November 2019, then surpassing Florida in December, with 19.3 million pounds compared to Florida’s 17.8 million.
Scotlynn Sweet Pac Growers has sweet corn in Belle Glade, FL, Bainbridge, GA., and Vittoria. but its Georgia crop was dealt a blow by the weather.
Florida is also a big cucumber state. For the fall-winter seasons, they start trickling into the market in August, get going in September and peak in November.
In November 2019, the state shipped 21.3 million pounds of cucumbers, which is 2.5 times more than the only other state growing enough commercially to be listed — Georgia at 7.4 million pounds.
In December, Florida was the only state in the U.S. shipping cucumbers.
However, Mexico shipped 95 million pounds of cucumbers into the U.S. in November 2019, more than four times as many as Florida did.
Citrus
Seald Sweet International/Greenyard USA markets fruit for Hunt Bros. Citrus, handling Florida grapefruit, oranges and tangerines with a packing house in Lake Wales.
A slight dip in volume is expected compared to last year in oranges and grapefruit.
The USDA forecast the 2020-21 Florida orange crop — 96 percent which is processed for juice — to be down 15 percent from last season.
And Florida’s grapefruit production, 40 percent of which is sold fresh, is estimated to drop by 7.3 percent compared with last season.
Arctic® apple shipments will have the largest volume shipments to date, according to Okanagan Specialty Fruits (OSF), developer and grower behind the fruit.
The apples were harvested in Washington state, where 1,350 acres of Arctic apple orchards are planted. The Arctic® Golden harvest yielded approximately 8,400 bins or almost 8 million pounds. The Arctic® Granny harvest recently concluded and yielded approximately 5,500 bins or 5 million pounds. This is twice the size of the 2019 harvest and is attributed to an increase in harvestable acreage from last year and the trees, which as they mature, produce more fruit.
Arctic apples use the apple’s own genes to “turn off” the enzyme responsible for making apples turn brown when cut or bruised. The result is an amazing quality, longer shelf life apple that tastes and looks better, which means less food waste from harvest to consumption. Arctic apples retain their fresh appearance and delicious flavor throughout the shelf life, which surpasses all other freshcut apples in the market.
Arctic apples are developed and grown specifically for fresh cut applications. Arctic apples are unmatched in flavor, convenience, and sustainability. For more information, please visit arcticapples.com.
There are more U.S. table grapes remaining in storage to be shipped than last year, following an increase in volumes of Autumn King and Allison over the last few weeks.
There were 13.7 million boxes in storage as of October 31, according to the USDA’s latest Western Fruit Report Grape Cold Storage Summary. That figure represents a sharp increase from the 11.1 million boxes registered in mid October and a slight rise above the 13.2 million from this time last year.
The increase in the second half of October this year was in part due to the Autumn King variety, whose volumes rose from 2.3 million boxes to 4.7 million.
At the end of October 2019 there were 3.6 million boxes of Autumn King. In addition, volumes of the Allison variety have increased substantially, growing over the second half of October from 582,000 boxes to 2.2 million.
The new figure remains below the 2.5 million recorded at this time last year. As of the end of October in the bumper 2018 season, there were a total of 18.1 million boxes in storage.