Posts Tagged “feature”
It’s looking like another banner year for California grape shipments as the desert winds down and the San Joaquin Valley cranks up.
With the end of May, Coachella volume appeared down 20% from 2014. Early starts can make for early finishes. Some Coachella shippers are just finishing their desert grape season, about a week early. However, a few shipments will occur in the last week of June….Mexican grape shipments face a similar situation. Some loadings will end the around June 20th, when July 4th is typical.
While Coachella and Mexico are finishing up early, shipping gaps are not seen because the San Joaquin Valley grape shipments are ahead of schedule. Initial light harvests are expected by June 20-22. Shipments should be moving into good volume by the second week of July.
Preliminary estimates for California grape shipments out of the San Joaquin Valley are pegged at 113.3 million 19-pound boxes for 2015. This is up from 110.9 million last year. The state’s record, set in 2013, was 116.3 million. Loadings of California grapes should be available through November.
California Tomato Shipments
California shipped its first load of mature green tomatoes on June 2. Several more loads were shipped during the week of June 8th, putting the crop about a week ahead of schedule. If all goes as expected, California will have mature greens through about mid-November. The mature green tomato is popular with foodservice companies and also is used by repackers across the country. Acreage is down about 10 percent this year due to the California drought.
While the California season gets under way, there are also tomatoes from several other locations including crossings from Mexico into California, Arizona and Texas.
San Joaquin Valley tomatoes, stone fruit and vegetables – grossing about $5000 to Chicago; $7400 to New York City.
New Jersey blueberry shipments are underway, plus the Garden State’s peach season is coming soon. Additionally, in Idaho, fruit shipments take a big hit for this season.
New Jersey weather warmed up in mid May and helped bring on blueberries. New Jersey blueberry shipments get underway any day now with the Duke variety. Blues should be in good volume heading in the Fourth of July holiday. Shipments should continue through late July.
New Jersey Peach Shipments
It will be the middle of July before New Jersey peach shipments hit good volumes. Meanwhile peak loadings will arrive later in July and continue through the end of September.
Idaho Fruit Shipments
An Idaho freeze last November in Treasure Valley with temperatures plunging below zero for four straight days resulted in major damage to some fruit trees that had not had a chance to go into dormancy. Many trees have long cracks that occurred when sap and water had not had a chance to move down to the root system. This caused the wood to split open.
In general, apples appear to have weathered the freeze better than other fruit such as prune trees and peach trees. Some fruit trees probably lost two years of their production capability as a result of the November cold. A record warm February and near-record warm March that caused trees to bloom much earlier than normal was followed by an April 3 freeze that damaged blooms.
Idaho potatoes – grossing about $4900 to Philadelphia.
Nathel & Nathel Inc. has expanded operations on the Hunts Point Terminal Market located in the South Bronx of New York City.
The New York-based wholesaler has added refrigeration capacity, reconfigured its fruit and vegetable divisions and improved its docks for truck loading and unloading. Following the closure of Krisp-Pak Sales Corp. in 2012, Nathel & Nathel took over its units and was working on closing on the purchase of units from the defunct Korean Farm, which went out of business in 2014.
Nathel & Nathel now distributes produce from to 23 units.
The distributor also upgraded the warehouse to Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point standards.
Better refrigeration control in different zones will result from the improvements, according to company vice president Sheldon Nathel said. It also should result in better temperature control for fruits and vegetables as well as better organize the operation, making it more efficient.
Nathel & Nathel sells a full line of fruits and vegetables, including tropicals and specialties, to customers throughout the Tri-State region.
The Hunts Point Terminal Market occupies 329 acres and supports 115 private wholesalers that employ over 8,000 people.
Hunts Point wholesalers are paying a freight rate of about $5000 from the Lower Rio Grand Valley of Texas for fruits and vegetables, and about $4800 for Idaho potatoes.
Ohio has more than the Bengals, Browns and Buckeyes. This time of year it becomes an important player in shipping vegetables.
Ohio Vegetable Shipments
The state got underway with radishes mid-May, and dill, cilantro and turnip and mustard greens by the end of the month. Following shortly after that were beets, lettuces, parsley, sweet corn, green onions and celery.
Ohio radish shipments continue from mid-May to mid-November, with other commodities starting in June and winding down in October.
Then you have sweet corn, celery and peppers, which should get underway in mid- to late July and last until the first frost.
Ohio experienced its hottest May since 1988 — which was a drought year. Some daytime highs were in the 90s, although the 80s were more typical. The heat helped bring the vegetable crops on earlier and grow faster.
Here are a few of the major shippers of Ohio vegetables:
Bettinger Farms Inc., Swanton, OH
Wiers Farm Inc. and Dutch Maid Produce, Willard, OH.
Holthouse Farms, Willard, OH.
Buurma Farms, Willard, OH
The harvest of California navel oranges is winding down as July approaches and the season’s production could be close to 81 million cartons, although late season citrus is requiring more grading as marketable product keeps falling. At the same, Valencia orange shipments are replacing navels.
For much of the season, utilization rates — the percentage of fruit that could be sold as fresh — remained in the low 80s, but now it has dipped into the 70s as the crop has been picked over. Subpar oranges are diverted to juice.
Meanwhile, harvest is under way for a diminished Valencia orange crop. Growers this season are expected to ship a 20-million-carton crop, down from 22 million cartons last year and a little more than half the 39 million cartons produced in 2001-02.
Only about 25 to 30 percent into that crop has been harvest, but the Valencias are coming out fewer than expected.
The harvest hits as a fourth year of the California drought and its related federal surface water shutoffs have resulted in many growers taking trees out of production. It is estimated as many as 50,000 acres of orange and other citrus trees would be bulldozed.
The orchard removals could take a particular toll on Valencia trees, which were already being replaced with navels and other more lucrative citrus varieties before the drought began. Valencia acreage has seen a precipitous decline in recent years; there are about 34,000 bearing acres this year, down from 65,000 in 2001-02.
San Joaquin Valley produce rates for citrus, veggies and fruit have been fluctuating by nearly a $1000 in a given week to New York City. On average, rates appear to be around $7700 to the Big Apple.
Holt Logistics Corp., of Gloucester City, NJ has landed separate business agreementsthat has attacted two additional weekly shipments from South America and Central America to Philadelphia’s Packer Avenue Marine Terminal.
The “South American Express” service started June 3rd, operated by SeaLand, the Denmark-based Maersk Group’s intra-Americas regional ocean carrier, plans to begin calling on the terminal.
The service previously terminated in Norfolk, Va., and the change expands SeaLand’s direct connections from Central America into the northeast and provides shippers with better access to U.S. consumers and a user-friendly docking environment for refrigerated peribshable goods, including tropical fruits and other commodities, according to a news release.
Additionally, a joint vessel sharing agreement between SeaLand and American President Lines is designed to create a new “North American Express” service that should attract an additional ship to the terminal each week.
The “North Atlantic Express” service is pending regulatory approval but is scheduled to commence in late June.
The service rotation plans to cycle between the Manzanillo International Terminal in Panama, Cartagena, Columbia, south Florida, Savannah, Ga., Philadelphia and New York.
It boosts SeaLand’s network and offers additional direct connections and service between the West Coast of South America, Central America, the Caribbean and the U.S. East Coast. Business at the Port of Philadelphia continues to grow, and the addition of two weekly service calls from SeaLand/APL will increase efficiency, shorten overall transit times and provide greater opportunities to expand business in both perishable and non-perishable commerce between North and South America.
In 2014 TransFresh Corporation introduced the Tectrol Storage Solution utilizing BreatheWay Technology by California produce company Apio to provide more reliable storage for fresh blueberries. While the produce trucker hauling these berries may never see the process, that driver should benefit from it.
Rich Macleod, TransFresh vice president, pallet division, based in Salinas, CA, says, “There’s a reason we call it a storage solution….blueberry growers store their blueberries (in a controlled atmosphere bag) prior to shipping. The storage bag is removed before being shipped.”
He adds the bag is dynamically different from modified atmosphere for which TransFresh has built a name with strawberries.
Macleod points out blueberries after harvest are sometimes stored as long as four to six weeks as a way of balancing the market.
“To the driver that means that load will be available on a scheduled basis,” Macleod relates. “For example, he will know he needs to be in the Northwest every Tuesday to pick up six pallets of blueberries. It won’t be this frantic thing like picking up and delivering strawberries or cherries.”
Additionally, Macleod sees the Storage Solution as reducing the chances of quality problems at destination, which could lead to claims or deductions from the freight rate.
“When the market is orderly, that’s good for everybody,” he says.
Looking to the future, Macleod notes they are starting to solve the blueberry storage solutions for international transportation. If the shipper is an exporter, when those berries are loaded into a 40-f00t sea van, the product is placed in a controlled atmosphere. He also sees the day when this could be applicable for blueberries and other items being imported to by US companies from countries such as Chile and Peru.
“I don’t see this replacing containers,, but it could certainly impact the number of containers used. I see them being used side by side,” he says.
In the controlled atmosphere systems there is a device that records the atmosphere for the entire container. However, Macleod sees this being cost prohibitive to something like that in each pallet. However, there is research being conducted in this area.
By Larry Oscar
As we get things going toward the next big election, things couldn’t heat up more for some Americans. It’s time that we took note of all we have seen in the past eight years and what our country needs to do to get our economy and American values back on track.
The recent situations in Ferguson, MO and Baltimore, MD should make every American sit up and take note. Both of these situations have resulted in the release of years of frustration by the citizens of these communities and many other communities throughout this country. As a city councilman in Baltimore put it, “The violence is wrong, but it is a reflection of the lack of educational and economic opportunity for the people who live in this community.” Very well put.
And just who caused the educational and economic opportunity to leave the community, and many more just like them throughout the entire country? Well let’s take a look at both the education issue and the job opportunity issue. For starters, the education system in this country has been going downhill since the late 1960’s. To be exact it was 1968 when the federal government and the big teacher unions took over. This is when the central planning liberals in Washington D.C. started telling us what we could do to discipline and teach our children in the individual states.
Big Government, Unions Have Ruined Education
And this is when the big teacher unions decided the union membership handouts were more important than the children’s education. So why should people in the cities like Baltimore be surprised? After all, my bet is almost 90% or more of the people who live there voted for the very politicians who supported Washington D.C. central planning and the big teacher unions. The irony is it was one of their favorite sons, Franklin Roosevelt, who warned them about government worker big unions. They didn’t listen did they?
How to Improve the Economy
Now let’s take a look a jobs. It’s actually very simple. If you want tomatoes what do you have to do? Obviously you have to grow healthy tomato plants. If you grow poorly watered or cared for tomato plants you will get very few and very small tomatoes. To get large juicy tomatoes you must grow healthy robust tomato plants. It’s the same for jobs. If you want good paying jobs you must grow strong and healthy businesses. And you must have a variety of healthy small businesses, as well as healthy large businesses.
For several years now our government has been making it harder and harder for small businesses to survive, and even giving large global businesses a financial incentive to leave the country. We have the highest corporate tax in the world. The current liberal philosophy toward business is that the large corporations are “evil,” and if you have a small business you didn’t create it.
Stop Blaming Others
To quote the Clown-in-Chief, “Someone else made that happen.”
My father was a simple man. He went to night school and studied drafting. He spent over 40 years at his craft, and he was an exceptional draftsman. Dad never once complained about what he got paid. He was always there to help me and his values were conservative. He taught me that almost 100% of the time my problems in life were looking back at me in the mirror every morning. Dad wouldn’t let me blame others.
You know what? He was right. Americans of all races, cultures, economic status, and faiths must accept the fact that they alone have voted for and got what we deserve. If we treat businesses like ATM machines, and continue to let our educational system decline, like it has been for the past 50 years, then we can’t expect our great country and the promise of the opportunity it used to hold, to continue. We are killing the goose who has been laying the golden eggs.
Envy of those who are successful must stop. It’s time for all Americans to look into the mirror. Don’t expect a superman in Washington to come and save the day. Our problems are of our own creation. We need pro business leadership. We need to honor and value the businesses of our nation and the people who built them with their own hands. We need to acknowledge and encourage individual achievement.
Free Handouts vs. Self Reliance
Instead of giving handouts and creating a government dependant class, we need to teach self reliance and standing on your own two feet. Our country should be a place where it is the easiest place in the world to start a business. We should not be a nation of regulation roadblocks to success.
Hey people. If you think economic opportunity is bad in Ferguson and Baltimore, you should have been in the former Soviet Union. Remember….your vote matters. Vote for someone who is pro business, and let’s gets some decent job growth.
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.
by The Alliance for Food and Farming
Watsonville, CA – The Consumers Union has released yet another produce “shoppers’ guide” list that can only contribute to increased consumer confusion about healthy dietary choices.
he article in Consumer Reports categorizes certain produce items that have been proven very safe as “high risk.” This categorization comes despite the Consumers Union’s own admission that half of the produce sampled by the USDA had no detectable residues at all. If residues were detected, the majority came in at levels well below Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) tolerances (99.8%).
Further, both USDA and EPA state that “residues do not pose a food safety concern.”
“For all of us involved in promoting better consumer health, increasing consumption of fruits and vegetables is among our main objectives. The benefits of consuming plenty of fruits and vegetables is absolutely indisputable. Consumers should eat both organic and conventionally grown produce without worrying about minute levels of pesticide residues,” says Dr. Carl Keen, Professor of Nutrition and Internal Medicine at University of California, Davis.
“Despite the best efforts of the government, health experts and nutritionists, consumption of fruits and veggies has stagnated. Telling consumers one moment that certain produce items are ‘high risk’ and the very next advising them to ‘eat more’ is confusing and cannot be helpful with efforts to increase consumption for improved health,” says Marilyn Dolan, Executive Director of the Alliance for Food and Farming.
Most recently, a peer reviewed study in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health showed that higher consumption of fruits and vegetables can reduce the risk of premature death by 42%, heart disease by 31% and cancer by 25%.
Recently, a new peer reviewed study conducted by the John Hopkins Center for a Livable Future found that conflicting messaging on food safety and nutrition may be having a detrimental impact on the dietary choices of consumers, especially those with lower incomes. Researchers involved in the study recommended that “those who want to improve food production techniques and those who want to improve nutrition cooperate to create consistent messaging about healthy eating for the benefit of consumers.”
“The science is clear that the best advice for consumers is also the simplest – eat more conventional and organic produce for better health,” Dolan says. “And, if you are concerned about residues, wash your produce.
The Alliance for Food and Farming is a non-profit organization formed in 1989 which represents organic and conventional farmers and farms of all sizes. Alliance contributors are limited to farmers of fruits and vegetables, companies that sell, market or ship fruits and vegetables or organizations that represent produce farmers. Our mission is to deliver credible information to consumers about the safety of fruits and vegetables. The Alliance does not engage in any lobbying activities, nor do we accept any money or support from the pesticide industry.
There should be excellent loading opportunities for produce haulers as shipments start to ramp up ahead of the Fourth of July. Here’s a round up of some Independence Day produce favorites.
Watermelon Shipments
On the East Coast watermelons loadings will be available from Northern Florida, Georgia and North Carolina. While Florida melon shipments are rapidly declining, Georgia loadings just started this week, with decent volume seen the week of June 15th….Meanwhile, in North Carolina, shipments of seeded watermelons should get underway around June 25th, followed by seedless melons about July 1st.
Northern Florida watermelons – grossing about $3200 to New York City.
In the Midwest, Texas, Oklahoma and Missouri are typically shipping watermelons by late June or early July. However, use caution as many of these regions have been hit with heavy rains and cloudy weather for days on end. It has to have adversely affected quality, at least with some of these production areas. However, hot, dry weather has set in the past week or so. Maybe this will help.
Sweet Corn Shipments
Georgia should be shipping good volumes of sweet corn ranging from Bainbridge to the Vidalia area.
South Georgia sweet corn, or vegetables – grossing about $3600 to Boston.
Berry Shipments
Heavy volume with strawberries should be coming out of the Watsonville/Salinas area. California also will have strawberry loadings from the Santa Maria district…..California blueberry shipments could be a little “ify.” “Blues” are now shifting from the Golden State to Oregon, Washington and British Columbia.
Watsonville berries and Salinas Valley vegetables – grossing about $7500 to New York City.