Posts Tagged “feature”
Since the opening of the Mexican superhighway that basically connects the Pacific Ocean produce growing areas with the Lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas, refrigerated truck traffic has gradually increased and more fruits and vegetables are crossing the border into the U.S. at Pharr/McAllen than at Nogales, AZ.
Both truck and auto traffic from central and western Mexico can reach the Pharr International Bridge and enter the U.S. five to seven hours faster than prior to the super highway being completed. lt took 15 years to construct the Mazatlan-Durango highway that has 115 bridges and 61 tunnels.
South Texans love to brag about how the new highway has allowed them to compete with Nogales and point out that within the past year more fresh produce is crossing the border at Pharr/McAllen than at Nogales. South Texas is now the number one point of entry for fresh produce entering the U.S., accounting for 60 percent of the imports. Leading the crossings are avocados followed by tomatoes.
This apparently is just the beginning as some observers are predicting in the next three to five years, produce volume from Mexico crossing the border in the Lower Rio Grande Valley will increase 40 to 45 percent. Besides saving time on shipments originating in Mexico, substantial savings on diesel fuel is cited for shipments destined from markets in the eastern half of the United States.
To accommodate the increasing traffic at the Pharr/McAllen border crossing, new warehousing is being constructed, as well as an expedited lane to the estimated 2,200 trucks crossing the border daily. Truckers pay a toll at the point of entry amounting to up to $23, depending upon the number of axles. Within a few years, truck traffic is predicted to hit 3,000 per day.
Mexican fruits and vegetables crossing the border into South Texas – grossing about $2400 to Chicago; $3800 to New York City.
California broccoli shipments continue to struggle with volume and quality, while raspberry loadings have improved. Meanwhile, record walnut loadings are forecast.
Just about the time it seem Salinas Valley lettuce shipments are getting straightened out from unpredictable highs and lows in volume, a similar problem is now occurring with Salinas Valley broccoli shipments. Again, similar to lettuce, broccoli has been facing some quality problems such as brown bead, hollow stem and stunted growth, which are the side effects of hot weather. Some areas of the Salinas Valley have hit 110 degrees recently. While quality is expected to improve going further into September, volume could remain below normal for weeks. It’s always good to check what’s being loaded onto the truck, so the buyer (receiver) knows what is being delivered.
Salinas Valley vegetables – grossing about $6800 to New York City.
Berry Shipments
Raspberry shipments from the Salinas/Watsonville district have improved in the past week as the weather has cooled. The berries are grown under hoops and inside the hoops, and it was simply too hot. This time of the year, raspberry production is limited to the Watsonville and Salinas areas. Shipments of the fruit normally occur from May through October.
Watsonville/Salinas berries – grossing about $4500 to Dallas.
Walnut Shipments
This year’s California walnut production from the San Joaquin Valley is forecast at a record 575,000 tons despite a lack of chilling hours during winter and the California drought that continues to impact the state. The forecast is up 1 percent from 2014’s production of 570,000 tons.
According to the USDA, California walnut acreage amounted to 181,000 in 1990 and increased every year to 300,000 acres in 2015. In the past decade alone, acreage increased by 40 percent. The number of trees per acre went up significantly as well.
New season Colorado potato shipments are underway, but still light in volume, while increasing.
About 250 truck loads were shipping last week.
While we don’t a forecast yet for the 2015-16 shipping season it appears there won’t be any drastic changes in total truck shipments from this past year.
The San Luis Valley planted 52,900 acres of potatoes for the 2014-15 shipping season. With the end of July the region had shipped nearly 14 million cwt of fresh market spuds.
There were 2,561 truck loads shipped during July, compared to 2,291 in July 2014 and 1,839 in 2013. Shipments to date for the 2014-15 seaspm were 30,325 truck loads, compared to 29,344 in 2014 and 31,988 in 2013.
Organic potato acreage continues to increase, and now exceeds 4,000 acres.
Shipments of yellow potatoes also is increasing. It now accounts for 8 to 10 percent of the volume each year nationally. Russet Norkotahs continue to lead the pack in overall potato acreage in the San Luis Valley. Red potato shipments are a much smaller percentage.
Fingerlings and specialty potato shipments also are increasing from the San Luis Valley.
San Luis Valley potato shipments – grossing about $3300 to Cleveland.
Woerner Purchases Cañon Potato
Cañon Potato Co. has been acquired by Woerner Holdings Inc. and Woerner subsidiary H.C. Schmieding Produce Co. will market and distribute potatoes from Cañon’s Center, Colo., facility.
In the deal, Woerner takes on the packing and storage facility of Cañon Potato, which announced its closure in 2013. That’s when the co-owner and a sales veteran left to join a competing Colorado shipper.
Springdale, Ark.-based potato shipper H.C. Schmieding Produce was sold to West Palm Beach, Fla.-based Woerner in April.
The sweet potato harvest in the South started in August and shipments are expected to be pretty steady this season. However, it will probably be October before the old crop is finished being shipped.
In 2014 about 115,000 acres of sweet potatoes were harvested in the Southern states – primarily from North Carolina, Louisiana, Mississippi and Arkansas. Total volume is expected to be slightly higher this year.
North Carolina Sweet Potato Shipments
North Carolina, which grows and ships more sweet potatoes by far than any other state, could see a boost of 2,000 planted acres this season — up to 75,000 acres. Harvest got underway the last half of August. However, the old crop is still being shipped and probably won’t be finished up until late September or early October. The new crop has to be (or at least should be for better quality) cured before shipping.
Louisiana growers could see a 20 percent increase in acreage this season. In 2014 the state had 8,800 harvested acres.
Arkansas had 4,000 harvested acres in 2014. Most of it is grown and shipped by Matthews Ridgeview Farms, Wynne, Ark.
In 2014, Alabama had 2,000 harvested acres and had started their harvest in early August.
Eastern North Carolina sweet potatoes – grossing about $2250 to Atlanta, $3000 to Boston.
Residents of California lead the nation in vegetable consumption, while neighboring Oregon is second.
Even though Oregon is second, most folks here aren’t eating enough, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
About 11 percent of Oregonians are eating the recommended two to three cups of vegetables a day, second only to California, where 13 percent eat enough veggies, CDC researchers report.
Nationwide, only 8.9 percent of Americans are eating two to three cups of vegetables every day as recommended.
Fruit consumption is slightly better. About 14.5 percent of Oregonians are eating the recommended 1.5 to 2 cups of fruit a day, compared with 13.1 percent of all Americans and 17.7 percent of people in California.
Fruits and vegetables are important in lowering a person’s risk of developing chronic diseases like obesity, heart disease and Type 2 diabetes, said Jordana Turkel, a registered dietitian at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City.
For example, they contain a lot of fiber, which helps control spikes in blood glucose levels by slowing the digestive process, and the fact that they are generally low in fat helps lower cholesterol levels.
“We are seeing now what is going to happen if this trend continues,” Turkel said. “Obesity is on the rise. The rates of Type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease are on the rise. I think we are seeing the effects of all of this now.”
By Larry Oscar
Just smack me down with Hillary’s e-mails! It’s presidential election time again, and this election cycle may prove to be the most entertaining in decades.
And it would be far more fun if it the world was not in such a state of chaos. For that reason alone all Americans should step back and take a hard look at what this nation has become over the last several years. We have gone from the world’s leader in individual liberty to just another nation of moochers with our hands out waiting for a government check.
But the politicians are out in force promising even more government handouts for your vote. Funny thing, if a politician was to offer you a dime for your vote it would be illegal, but they can offer you a big fat welfare check for your vote, and somehow that’s okay. It should be illegal for any politician to offer anything of monetary value for your vote. The left wing party of our nation has a distorted collection of welfare promising “vote suckers.” They range from a mad socialist from Vermont; a Muppet version of Miss Piggy; to old Gaffy Duck Joe himself.
All of them claim to be the champion of the poor, the downtrodden, and the ever shrinking middle class. And their solution to all of the ills of these “oppressed” groups is to take more money from the producers in our nation and distribute it to the non-producers. Never mind that this didn’t work out so well in the former Soviet Union, North Korea, East Germany, Cuba, Venezuela, or any other socialist nation.
Old Gaffy Duck Joe recently proclaimed that corporations should do the “patriotic” thing and gladly pay more taxes. I guess old Gaffy flunked his history class. I seem to recall the patriots were the ones who dumped the tea into Boston harbor in protest of high taxation. It is time for Americans to restore our country’s commitment to individual liberty. There is a movement taking hold in this country and that is one reason the controversial New Yorker Donald Trump has been drawing huge crowds. New Yorkers are not known for their calm cool demeanor, and “The Donald” is no exception.
The United States was a beacon of hope for liberty for the entire world at one time, and we need to reclaim that title. When immigrants came to America the first thing they saw was a statue standing tall in the New York harbor that was given to us by France. It was the Statue of Liberty. It’s not the statue of welfare handouts, or gay rights, or illegal immigration, or political correctness, or even right-to-life, but the statue of LIBERTY!
Liberty is the main founding principal that this county was built upon. It is our national belief that liberty is more important than life itself. Liberty is what we fought and died for in every war this country has ever fought. And just in case some of you don’t know. The belief in liberty is why about 500,000 mainly white men fought and died to set the black man in this country free.
A fact that those who live in Baltimore and Fergusson need to think about. When you yield your individual liberties in exchange for big government handouts, excessive government regulations, or government social laws that favor ones religious beliefs, you are carving out the path to your own destruction. Liberty costs lives. We pay the price in lives every year for our liberties. Over 30,000 lives per year to have the liberty to own and drive an automobile. Over 4,500 lives per year to keep and bear arms. And we will pay a high cost in lives to maintain and ensure that our military is ready to defend our liberties in a world where those would take it away and remove your head.
America may be at a crossroads. Those of us whose parents fought against tyranny and won will soon be gone. We have now raised a generation who have never lost their liberties. They don’t know or understand the value that individual liberty adds to their life. And the big question is will they wake up and work to restore the greatness of America that brought hope to the rest of the world? Or will they sell their liberty for the promise of a government regulated and controlled life? Will they yield to the cry of those politicians who cry out, “We are all in this together. The government is here to help and, of course, I need to be in charge?”
What this nation and the world needs right now is a Patrick Henry in the White House.
Larry Oscar is a graduate from the University of Tulsa and holds a degree in electrical engineering. He is retired and lives with his wife on a lake in Oklahoma where he brews his own beer, sails, and is a member of numerous clubs and organizations.
Price inflation has slowed to a crawl in 2015 for retail fresh produce.
Little or no inflation this year is expected for retail fresh fruit prices, while the top end of retail fresh vegetable price inflation is just 1.5%.
The USDA’s Economic Research Service reported in late July that the agency’s updated forecast for retail price inflation for fruit is now in a range 0% to 1% for 2015, rising to 2.5% to 3.5% next year. For fresh vegetables, the USDA predicts retail prices will increase from 0.5% to 1.5% and rising 2% to 3% next year.
Retail price inflation for fresh fruits in 2014 was 4.8%, while fresh vegetable retail prices were off 1.3% compared with 2013. The 20-year average inflation rate for retail fresh fruits is 3% and 3.2% for vegetables.
Fresh produce prices will increase at a lower rate than the overall food price index. The agency predicts overall supermarket food prices will increase 1.75% to 2.75% this year, with higher inflation for beef and eggs. In 2016, the USDA predicts retail food prices will increase from 2% to 3%, in line with the 20-year average of 2.6%.
Though the California drought has not caused fresh produce inflation this year, the USDA said it could play a role in food prices next year.
“The ongoing drought in California could have large and lasting effects on fruit, vegetable, dairy, and egg prices,” the USDA said in the forecast. On the other hand, the agency said lower trending oil prices could cause lower production and transportation costs to be passed on to consumers.
The USDA said farm-level prices for growers are down compared with a year ago. The agency predicts farm level prices for vegetables will decline 4% to 5% this year, while farm-level fruit prices will sink between 5% and 6%. For 2016, the USDA predicts grower prices for fresh fruits will rise 1.5% to 2.5%, while grower prices for fresh vegetables will increase 1% to 2%.
SYRACUSE, N.Y. – Giving produce exporters a better way to maintain the quality of perishables in transit, Hamburg Süd, one of the top refrigerated container carriers worldwide, recently added 400 refrigerated containers equipped with Carrier Transicold’s XtendFRESH™ atmosphere control system. Carrier Transicold is a part of UTC Building & Industrial Systems, a unit of United Technologies Corp. (NYSE: UTX).To slow ripening and help preserve produce quality, the XtendFRESH system actively manages oxygen and carbon dioxide levels within refrigerated containers and removes ethylene.
The new XtendFRESH systems have been placed into service in support of avocado exporters shipping from the west coast of South America to Asia, North America and Europe, according to Martin Schoeler, senior manager, Logistics-Technology, Hamburg Süd.
“Avocados are a significant market and initially will be the main target of utilization,” Schoeler said, adding that banana exports beyond 30 days will also be able to benefit from the XtendFRESH system’s capabilities.
“Ethylene removal is a unique feature of the XtendFRESH system that differentiates it from other systems and is definitely much desired by our customers,” said Michaela Steineker, global reefer manager, Sales & Marketing, Hamburg Süd, explaining that in collaborating with Carrier Transicold on operational tests, the shipping line stressed the importance of this capability in an atmosphere control system.
Prior to purchase, Hamburg Süd commissioned independent testing on the XtendFRESH system by Eurofins, using bananas in stationary trials and shipped from Latin America to Scandinavia, which verified the system’s ability to help preserve the quality of perishable items. The produce was analyzed for appearance, freshness, water content and other attributes.
The 400 new XtendFRESH systems were factory-installed on PrimeLINE® refrigeration units equipped with Carrier Transicold’s energy-saving EDGE technology package, all of which were mounted to 40-foot high-cube containers. EDGE stands for Enhanced Digital for Greater Efficiency and includes a set of design enhancements that improve upon the PrimeLINE unit’s successful track record of energy efficiency. The EDGE option significantly reduces energy consumption for refrigeration beyond the low levels for which standard PrimeLINE units are known, helping Hamburg Süd achieve its sustainability goals.
“We are pleased to provide Hamburg Süd with innovative technology that enables them to expand their service offerings to customers,” said David Appel, president, Carrier Transicold & Refrigeration Systems. “By helping to prevent premature ripening, the XtendFRESH system aids in maintaining optimum quality and shelf life of delivered produce while reducing the potential for food waste from spoilage.”
The XtendFRESH system’s ability to remove ethylene, while precisely managing oxygen and CO2, is key to its performance and distinguishes it from other products for container atmosphere control. Ethylene is a hormone given off by ripening produce that accelerates ripening if left unchecked. A patented, self-regenerating activated-carbon scrubber assembly captures ethylene and controls CO2 levels. As oxygen is consumed by ripening produce, automated, on-demand fresh-air ventilation helps maintain the optimum level for the cargo inside.
With long experience in the transport of perishable cargo, Hamburg Süd ranks among the largest container carriers serving South America.
The most enduring impacts of the four-year California drought may be felt in the citrus industry, where tree removal and replanting take acres out of production for about five years. If they’re replanted at all.
Valencias were the first and easiest target for removal, given the decline in demand for that fruit, but some navel groves have come down too. Bulldozers are still shying away, though, from mandarins.
Bob Blakely, director of industry relations for Exeter-based California Citrus Mutual, estimates citrus tree removal for 2014 and 2015 will total up to 25,000 acres.
“It’s being escalated because growers don’t have enough water,” Blakely said. “They were taking out less productive, lower quality groves in 2014. This year we’re seeing some good-quality groves going out just because growers don’t have the water to take care of their trees. They’re having to make tough decisions and push out better trees than they pushed out last year.”
“Underperforming groves have been targeted to eventually take out or replace,” said Seth Wollenman, sales and brand manager for Lindsay, Calif.-based Suntreat Packing & Shipping Co.
Some lost acreage has already been replanted with more desirable varieties. New trees use less water than mature trees, and some growers have seen the drought as an opportunity to accelerate redevelopment.
“Where they have trees available they’re going ahead and replanting, betting that this drought will break and that they’ll have water to bring those trees on into production,” Blakely said. “I think it’s going to be several years before we see the kind of yields we had prior to the drought.”
California navels will start in mid-October if they repeat their performance in the last two years, given the early starts of other crops in the state. Navels typically start around Nov. 1.
Yields are likely to equal last year’s, Blakely said, but tree removal will push volume down. Weather could pose problems too.
“If we don’t get some rains in the fall to size it up, we could still be looking at small sizes and fewer boxes,” he said July 24.
The California Department of Food and Agriculture and USDA will release the annual navel estimate in the second week of September. Valencias, a summer fruit, continue to harvest in the fall.
Mandarins
On the easy-peel side, satsuma oranges are expected to arrive ahead of navels, in late September or early October. Clementine production should start a little after the navels.
“They’re picking clementines up until Christmas or so, and the murcotts are the spring variety,” Blakely said.
He expected California mandarin volumes to be up this year as new acreage continues to come into production.
“That’s going to continue to trend up for several years.
Southern California valencias – grossing about $7000 to Boston.
Apple shipments from New York and Ontario should be normal volume this season. However, apple loadings out of New England could show a double digit increase.
The U.S. Apple Association says New England’s six-state harvest is expected to be about 14 percent higher than last year’s and 18 percent above the region’s five-year average. The USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service estimates total New England apple shipments will come in at just under 170 million pounds. The estimate is for the states of Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Maine and Vermont.
New York Apples
A lot, if not the majority of New York’s apple shipments originate from the Hudson Valley and Western New York. The Empire State has shipped about 30 million bushels of apples every year for the last several years. Total volume for the 2015-16 season are expected to be close to the five-year average.
The harvest in New York started in late-August and continues through early-November,
Currently shipments included Jonamacs, McIntoshes, Zestars, Paula Reds, Ginger Golds and Galas.
Ontario Apple Shipments
Extreme cold last winter damaged some trees and forced a later spring in Ontario, but growers in the Georgian Bay region still anticipate average crops this year. However, that isn’t the case in all parts of the province.
Ontario normally produces about 7-million bushels of apples annually, but this year it’s estimated the crop will be about 4-million. Harvest is now underway.