Posts Tagged “California”
The Salinas Valley continues to provide the best loading opportunities with fall produce. Shipments of vegetables are holding pretty steady from week to week. Various types of lettuce is providing the heaviest volume. When you combine lettuce, with volume coming from celery, broccoli and cauliflower, the Salinas Valley is averaging about 3,400 truck loads of vegetables a week.
This doesn’t include various lighter volume mixed vegetables, or berries. While the Watsonville district is shipping around 500 truck loads of strawberries weekly, this volume is declining. The nearby Santa Maria district is remain fairly steady with less volume, while shipments from Ventura County are very light, but increasing.
In previous reports there has been coverage of California citrus hauling prospects. Here is some information on lemon shipments, most of which will originate from the California and Arizona deserts between now until February. Loads will also be available from California’s San Joaquin Valley. Overall, lemon volume could be up 20 percent over a year ago.
The San Joaquin Valley’s biggest volume currently is with table grapes and tomatoes. Grape volume easily leads the pack. From the Bakersfield are northward through the San Joaquin Valley, grapes are averaging about 1800 truckloads per week.
Mature green tomato shipments from Central California are totalling over 725 truckloads per week.
San Joaquin Valley grapes, tomatoes, etc. – grossing about $6700 to New York City.
Salinas Valley vegetables, berries – about $4400 to Chicago.
Loading opportunities with Florida citrus will be up slightly from a year ago, following the trend of two other major citrus shipping states, California and Texas.
Overall orange shipments in Florida, which goes primarily to processors, is expected to increase four percent, from 206.2 million boxes to 214.9 million boxes.
The USDA predicts Florida loads to see only a slight increase, with the differnce coming in white grapefruit. However, a majority of grapefruit is for the fresh market.
Florida’s speciality citrus production is predicted to fall by seven percent for early-season and the later-season honey tangerines.
Overall Florida fresh produce shipments are entering the slowest time of the year. Good volume normally doesn’t return until late March or April when the spring mixed vegetable season cranks up.
As for USA citrus loading opportunities, the USDA sees a national increase for the fast approaching season. Overall USA citrus shipments are forecast to increase this upcoming season on all varieties except for Florida tangerines, California valencias and Texas oranges, which all are predicted to see slight declines. California’s main citrus volume is with navel oranges, while Texas typically ships a lot more grapefruit than oranges from the Lower Rio Grande Valley.
The USDA predicts the USA will increase overall citrus volume from last season’s 272.4 million equivalent cartons to 284.3 million equivalent cartons this year, a 4.2 percent hike.
Early, midseason and navel oranges are forecast to remain the same from last season, and late-season valencias are expected to increase from last season’s 73 million boxes to 80 million boxes this year.
Fall is definately settling in across the USA and autumn produce loads also are increasing.
The biggest indication the new season is gearing up is in the Northwest with shipments of apples from Washington’s Yakima and Wenachee Valleys. Last week the state’s apple volume exceeded 2,200 truckload equivalents and the amount will continue increasing in the weeks ahead. Demand for apples around the country is strong in big part due to Michigan losing most of its crop due to weather, plus significant losses in New York state.
In California, the heaviest volume for produce shipments continues with table grapes from the San Joaquin Valley, averaging about 1,600 truckloads per week. Salinas Valley lettuce is providing the next most available loads averaging about around 1,200 truckloads each week. There also are good loading opportunities with Watsonville area strawberries and with tomatoes from the Central San Joaquin Valley. The valley also is shipping stone fruit, but it is now in a seasonal decline.
In the upper mid-west, central Wisconsin about 400 truckloads of potatoes a week, but this will be increasing. In the same area, fresh cranberry shipments are small compared to potatoes, but still significant and will be increasing, particularly by the end of October as Thanksgiving shipments get underway.
In New England, there are light amounts of apples being shipped. Massachusetts cranberry shipments from the Cape Cod area also have started, and will increase in a similar fashion to those in Wisconsin.
On New York’s Long Island, about 60 truckloads of potatoes are being shipped weekly from the eastern end of the island.
Looking at North Carolina, the nation’s largest sweet potato shipper, there are about 65,000 acres of the product. Normal volume is expected. Some of the old crop is still being loaded. However, the new sweet potato crop will soon provide most of the shipments. A average amount of about 15 million cartons of sweet potatoes should be shipped from North Carolina over the next 10 or 11 months.
Washington apples – grossing about $4400 to Chicago.
Salinas Valley vegetables and berries – about $7100 to New York City.
Wisconsin potatoes – about $1000 to Chicago.
North Carolina sweet potatoes – about $1500 Atlanta.
This is the time of year when shipments of Florida grapefruit gets underway, as 
well as the new crop of sweet potatoes from various states coast-to-coast. It also means shipments of avocados will soon be shipping from California to arrivals of ports of entry from Mexico, as well as at various ocean ports receiving avocados from Chile.
Florida Grapefruit Loads
There was a shortage of California fruit and those shipments the first half of September ended about two weeks earlier than usual. Florida citrus shippers are beginning their new season shipping grapefruit right on schedule. Growers in the Indian River region began harvesting the last week of September. Loading opportunities for Florida grapefruit should start volume in early to mid-October.
Avocado Shipments
Plenty of avocado shipments should be available as California supplies wind down and Mexican and Chilean shipments increase.
California loads will be available longer than usual this fall, and big volumes from Mexico will be crossing the border in the coming weeks. By mid-October, California should be mostly finished for the season.
Sweet Potatoes
Sweet potato shipments in the USA may be down slightly this season, which extends through next summer.
As we previously reported, Louisiana and Mississippi were onlyslightly affected by Hurricane Isaac in late August….North Carolina and California are the largest shippers of sweet potatoes.
In 2011, there were 133,600 acres of sweet potatoes planted, while this year an estimated 131,400 acres planted.
Record or near record shipments of peanuts, almonds, walnuts, and pistachios 
are predicted by the USDA in the coming months. In fact, most types of nuts are expected to be plentiful for the fall, holiday and winter season, coming off of the 2012 harvest.
For example, record shipments of peanuts are predicted for the top four producing states of Georgia, Florida, Alabama and number four Texas. Georgia has nearly 60 percent more planted acrerage than a year ago and expects to ship over 2.8 million pounds of peanuts. The state accounts for nearly 50 percent of the nation’s peanut shipments.
Total U.S. peanut shipments are projected to be 5.9 million pounds in 2012, up from 3.6 million in 2011.
Almond loadings are expected to be up three percent from last year, totalling 2.1 billion meat pounds for 2012 on some 780,000 acres. California ships about 80 percent of the world’s almonds, with the leaders being Georgia, Texas and New Mexico. Total USA loadings in 2011 amounted to about 270 million pounds, and this is seen as increasing this year.
California also accounts for about 99 percent of the walnut volume in the United States, up two percent from a year ago. It’s not a record, but is close.
Record pistachio shipments are forecast out of California, Arizona, New Mexico and Nevada totalling 550 to 575 million pounds.
The California coastal valleys of Salinas and Santa Maria typically remain the 
major sources of supply of lettuce through mid-October. Huron, which is located on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley, usually fills the lettuce supply gap in late October through much of November before harvest switches to the desert in California and Arizona. Some of the hardier items, such as broccoli and cauliflower, will continue in the Salinas area until the shift to the desert (California’s Imperial Valley and the Yuma, AZ area) around Thanksgiving.
There has been strong shipments of California vegetables since early summer. A primary reason is the extreme drought in the Midwest and the upper Midwest, which knocked out some home-grown crops.
Additionally, there was the hurricane that hit New Orleans and continued on through the South hitting Kentucky and Tennessee and knocking out some of those local tomato harvests. It all helped to benefit shipments of California tomatoes.
Berries
Blackberry shipments are winding down on California’s Central Coast, but raspberries could go through the end of October.
Blackberries loadings tend to decline by the end of September and are finished by mid-October as the shipments out of Mexico pick up.
California strawberry and raspberry shipments have provided some problems for haulers over the summer. Both are more delicate fruit, especially raspberries. Much of this can be blamed on the horrendous summer heatthan began in June and continued through most of August. Good quality fruit results in more shipments (due to consumer demand), plus truckers deal with fewer rejections. Obviously the quality of the fruit has improved since the heat has subsided. The fruit holds up better when shipped.
Salinas area vegetables and berries – grossing about $4700 to Chicago.
There will be a half dozen fresh potato shippers up and running in the Red 
River Valley of North Dakota and Minnesota by the end of this week. That is a few more than typically run in mid-September, but with an early wrap-up in Big Lake, MN, demand is quickly shifting to the Red River Valley. Cooler temperatures this week should speed the harvest even more.
In North Carolina, the earliest shipping of cured sweet potatoes got underway September 17 from the new crop. However, some shippers will be shipping the old sweet potato crop through September….North Carolina leads the nation in sweet potato volume, which comes off of 64,000 acres from various parts of the state.
Sweet onions from Peru are arriving at various USA ports. Arrival of asparagus from Peru also are occurring, and should peak between now and into October.
Washington state is now shipping its second largest apple crop on record, estimated to be nearly 109 million boxes.
In California, pomegrante shipments are underway. It joins a host of more common produce items ranging from table grapes and stone fruit in the San Joaquin Valley, to veggies from the Salinas area…..The Santa Maria district is shipping a wide variety of berries and vegetables, although not in the volume found around Salinas. Freight rates fromt he Santa Maria district have risen slightly, while most other areas of the state are showing much change in rates, indicating adequate truck supplies.
Salinas Valley produce – grossing about $7200 to New York City.
Washington state fruit – about $4000 to Dallas.
Eastern North Carolina sweet potatoes – about $2250 to Chicago.
As one of the longer hottest summers on record comes to a close we can 
reflect on the changes that have taken place in the lives of Americans in just a few short months.
The debt crisis, a prolonged recession, a volatile stock and housing market, the failure of Keynesian economics, social unrest in the Middle East, higher diesel and gasoline prices, inflated food prices, European economic failures, tornados and hurricanes, and the prolonged heat wave creates an environment of stress throughout our country that Americans haven’t experienced since The Great Depression of the 1930’s.
It may be that the stresses in the lives of Americans are indeed even worse today than it was over 80 years ago. During the 1930’s people were more self-reliant. We were a nation of individuals who were not too many generations removed from the self-reliant pioneers who settled this country.
Over the last 200 years Americans have lost the ability to take care of themselves. We have become a nation of lemmings who depend on someone else for nearly everything in our lives.
Gone are the days when we grew our own food, built our own houses, stitched our own cloths, and provided for our own future. Today we have so many people who look toward the government, or “Federal Family” as the spin doctors are now calling the government, for everything in their lives.
We have become walking zombies. What is interesting is the difference in the attitude of the people who live in different states. Our nation was designed as a union of individual states. The idea being that people who live in the states can govern their own lives with local and state governments, and that the federal government is to be limited and nonintrusive in our individual lives.
However, over the past 200 years the federal government has been growing and growing. We are at a crossroads as a nation. Do we continue with this bloated federal government and the increased financial burden it places on the people, or do we start to shrink the federal government back to a manageable level?
That will be the question facing us in the coming elections in November. Our nation has survived and prospered over the past 200 years to become the greatest nation that has ever existed. Our brand of freedom and capitalism has fed more people, created more prosperity, spread more democracy and freedom, and increased mankind’s knowledge of medical science and technology than any nation in history.
Now we face a danger, not from a foreign threat, but from a threat of human complacency from within. Do we allow ourselves to become the beings of George Orwell’s book Nineteen Eighty-Four, or do we stand on our own two feet as our founding fathers did?
Our society has developed a disturbing pattern of behavior in our people. Nobody is willing to take responsibility for their lives or their actions. We are constantly blaming the conditions of our lives on anyone or anything but the results of our own actions. This even goes all the way to the Oval Office. Obama has blamed his failures on everything from the last president to earthquakes and tsunamis in Japan.
We didn’t elect him to play the blame game, we elected him to fix the leak. “Joe the plumber” could have done a better job. Unfortunately we have complete states with this type of mentality. I hate to keep picking on California, but they are the best example of the worst of us.
California, a state of lemmings, has 12% of the nation’s population and 32% of the nation’s welfare. And they wonder why they are in debt $24 billion dollars and getting worse every day. Now what’s wrong with this picture?
All of us need to stop and re-evaluate our lives as individuals. Are we to become a has-been nation of lemmings, or a revived nation of individuals standing on our own two feet. It is now time for the nation to decide.
I, for one, think we are about to see a great revival in this country. A revival that will embrace our brand of capitalism and crush the socialist marxist leanings of many of our lemming citizens. But I have been wrong before.
It is tempting to let big brother and the nanny state do the things for us that we should be doing for ourselves. Laziness is a very human temptation. So stand in front of a mirror, fully clothed of course, and take a good look at who is looking back at you. Is that person taking on the shape of a lemming? If so, go out and wash and wax your car.
That’s exactly what my wife is going to do this fall. And she may even wax my truck, as she promised after her team lost the Super Bowl earlier this year.
— Larry Oscar
California fall produce shipments are in full mode, although this certainly does not mean the volume is there you normally find 
during the late spring and summer.
One of the best hauls continues to be table grapes out of the San Joaquin Valley. It is providing big volume and is one the finest quality crops in recent memory. That shouldstranslate into a reduction of claims and rejected loads. Grapes are averaging about 2,000 truck loads per week. Good volume also continues from the San Joaqun Valley with peaches, plums and nectarines although shipments are now in a seasonal decline.
If there is one segment of the produce industry capable of over producing on a scale of the potato industry, it is the growers of tomatoes. Vine ripe tomatoes abound in California with shipments coming out of Ventura County, the San Diego area, as well as Mexican product originating from Baja California. However, the biggest tomato volume is with mature greens grown in the San Joaquin Valley as well as areas located between the valley and the San Francisco Bay area (such as Tracy).
In the Salinas Valley, vegetable loads remain pretty consistent, led by head lettuce, then celery, plus broccoli and cauliflower. Plenty of other vegetables help fill partial loads as well….Although strawberry shipments are lower from the Watsonsville District, they are still accounting for over 600 truck loads per week.
Salinas Valley strawberries and vegetables – grossing about $7000 to New York City.
San Joaquin Valley grapes – about $4800 to Chicago.
Consumers tend to absolutely love Asian pears. It is a very attractive looking 
fruit and somewhat resembles a golden delicious apple. The hosui variety harvest in California ends in mid-September, but thanks to storage is available in supermarkets through April or May.
Availability in stores will be at peak levels until around New Year’s. Asian pears tend to be a little pricy, but folks that love ’em will pay extra. This piece of fruit shown in the photo cost $1.21.
Around mid October consumers will also begin to see Asian pears from Japan arriving in stores.
NUTRITITIONAL FACTS
An Asian pear contains approximately 51 total calories. Carbohydrates account for 47 calories, fat contributes 2 calories and protein provides the remaining 2 calories. An Asian pear provides 3 percent of the daily value (DV) for total calories based on a diet of 2,000 calories per day.
The fruit has 13g of total carbohydrates. Simple sugars provide 9g of this total and dietary fiber accounts for the remaining 4g. An Asian pear has 4 percent of the DV for total carbohydrates and 18 percent of the DV for dietary fiber. An Asian pear doesn’t have any complex carbohydrates.
It contains 0.3g of fat, or less than 1 percent of the DV for fat. It doesn’t have any unsaturated fats, trans fats or cholesterol. An Asian pear also contains 0.6g of protein, which is slightly more than 1 percent of the DV for protein.
An Asian pear contains 8 percent of the DV for vitamin C, 7 percent of the DV for vitamin K and 2 percent of the DV for folate. It also has 4 percent of the DV for potassium, 4 percent of the DV for manganese, 3 percent of the DV for copper and 2 percent of the DV for magnesium. An Asian pear provides 1 percent or less of the DV for all other vitamins and minerals.
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