Following early shipments the past couple of years, Arkansas tomato loadings are expected to be more normal time-wise with light volume starting around June 10. Primary production is centered in south-central Arkansas around small towns such as Hermitage. Shipments should continue until about July 20th.
Florida Avocados
We’ll soon be entering the time of year when the bottom will drop out on Florida produce shipments as overall volume plummets. An exception is with Florida avocados.
South Florida had 7,500 acres in the 2012-13 season, shipping 1.16 million bushels. This was higher than the 819,594 bushel average growers shipped on an annual basis between 2006 and 2010.
Very light avocado shipments have started, but good volume will not hit until about July 1st. Peak shipments should take place in July through September.
Citrus
It is the tail end of the Florida shipping season for citrus, but there may be a little more product for hauling than originally predicted. The updated estimate shows an increase in grapefruit and a small decline in tangerines, with orange volume remaining the same.
The grapefruit forecast has been increased by 1.3 million equivalent cartons in May from its April estimate.
Colored grapefruit production increased 500,000 cartons while white grapefruit jumped 800,000 cartons, according to the USDA. About 95% of the state’s grapefruit has been shipped. The tangerines forecast has been dropped by 100,000 boxes to 3.4 million boxes. About 97% of the state’s honey tangerines has been shipped.
As for oranges, volume remains at 138 million cartons, with the late season valencias volume staying at 71 million cartons. The majority of the Florida’s oranges are processed. As for the fresh market, about 70% of navels, half of the grapefruit and two-thirds of the tangerines are for fresh.
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Trucking ReportsArkans , Arkansas , avocado , avocados , citrus , feature , Florida , grapefruit , oranges , South Florida , tomato , tomatoes , USDA
California’s Santa Maria district currently leads the state in strawberry volume with nearly 800 truck loads being shipped a week, but the Watsonville district will be catching up – and surpassing Santa Maria very soon. Meanwhile, Salinas Valley vegetables are continuing to increase is volume led by lettuce, broccoli and cauliflower. The San Joaquin Valley in cranking up with everything from stone fruit to vegetables.
The Imperial and Coachella valleys are shipping melons and mixed veggies, plus Coachella table grapes are now being shipped in volume.
Some produce loads, particularly from more northern Calilforna shipping areas, are already exceeding a rate of $9,000 to the East Coast.
Mexican tomatoes are being shipped in volume from Baja peninsula via distribution centers around San Diego. Product ranges from romas to grape, cherry and vine ripe tomatoes.
Looking ahead, warm April temperatures have pushed the California pear crop about 10 days ahead of last year. Early variety pears from the Sacramento River district should get underway around July 2-3, followed by bartletts about July 5.
The projected California almond crop is expected to reach 2 billion pounds this year. This would fall short only to 2011’s 2.03 billion pound crop and is 6% higher than 2012’s output, which was about 1.89 billion pounds. Almonds are the state’s largest agricultural export, with California alone producing 80 percent of the world’s supply.
California almond shipments come from over 810,000 acres.
Salinas vegetables – grossing about $9000 to Boston.
San Joaquin Valley stone fruit – about $6,000 to Chicago.
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Trucking ReportsBaja , California , feature , loads , Salinas , San Joaquin Valley , Santa Maria , stone fruit , tomatoes , vegetables , Watsonville
North Carolina is shipping light to moderate amounts of greens ranging from cilantro to kale, plus cabbage. These items handle the colder weather better than a lot of other vegetables which would normally be shipping now, but are up to two weeks behind schedule.
In mid June there should be loadings of veggies such as sweet corn, bell peppers, and tomatoes, among others.
North Carolina continues, pretty much on a year around, to ship sweet potatoes.
Georgia Vegetables
The Georgia Vidalia onion shipping season started out as a disaster due to disease problems caused by weather factors. Now Mother Nature has since shined on Southeastern Georgia, and suddenly, shippers have more onions than they know what to do with. The crop is now past the disease problems, quality is good, and shippers are shipping like crazy. Loadings are expected to continue into August.
Meanwhile, mixed vegetable loadings have got underway, primarily from Southern Georgia.
Mushrooms
Mushroom may not be at the top of your list when looking for produce loads, but it continues to grow in popularity. Pennsylvania is huge when it comes to growing and shipping mushrooms, along with California and Illinois. However, many states have mushroom growing facilities.
Sales of the 2011-12 U.S. mushroom crop totaled 900 million pounds, up 4 percent from the 2010-11 season.. This amounts to 22,500 truckload equivalents of mushrooms being hauled annually.
Vidalia onions – grossing about $2400 to Chicago.
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San Jose, CA – The Mushroom Council’s inaugural “Swap It or Top It” summer promotion will kick off the summer grilling season on June 1. The contest challenges consumers to transform their typical summer grilling recipes into healthier versions, by adding mushrooms, for the chance to win $5,000.
“The Trend is to Blend” states Mushroom Council President, Bart Minor, “Mushrooms and meat are a natural pairing, this contest will elevate the concept with the consumer while increasing mushroom sales” continues Mr. Minor. Summer grilling represents a huge opportunity for increased mushroom consumption. It is the ideal time as consumers are looking for lighter fare, to create retail sales lift, increase shopper awareness and build shopper impulse purchases of mushrooms.
The contest is called “Swap It or Top It” because there are two cooking techniques with mushrooms that can add a healthy flair to summer favorites. Swapping, for example, is the technique of blending finely chopped mushrooms with ground meat before cooking. By swapping 50 percent of beef in a burger with fresh mushrooms, it’s possible to reduce intake of calories, fat and saturated fat by 24, 25 and 37 percent, respectively. The other technique is to top dishes with mushrooms to add more vegetables to the plate, such as topping a turkey burger with roasted brown mushrooms.
Vice president of sales and marketing for Premier Mushrooms, Bob Murphy, states “By supporting ‘Swap It or Top It’ retailers can uphold promoting healthier choices to consumers at their market, which consumers continue to demand.”
Retailers can support the promotion to lift sales by stocking participating mushroom products, offering participating mushroom growers premium shelf space and by promoting the program via the Council’s Point-of-Sale material.
The contest is in partnership with the Produce for Better Health Foundation and MyPlate will further amplify program awareness, while drawing in the consumer with the use of each logo on all Point-Of-Sale material.
Encouraging consumers to Swap It or Top It using mushrooms is an important nutritional message in the movement to promote healthier eating with Americans. The contest fully supports the MyPlate message of boosting consciousness around meal time. Creating a MyPlate burger will engage consumers with portion size awareness while developing healthy eating patterns.
Mushrooms provide vitamins and nutrients such as B vitamins, potassium (8% DV), ergothioneine and many more. Mushrooms are also the ONLY item in the produce aisle with naturally occurring vitamin D. Mushroom’s umami enhances the flavor of the meat pairing resulting in both a healthy AND delicious meal. Adding mushrooms to a grill night enhances the upscale feel while maintaining an affordable budget.
Categories for entry include: Swapability/Blendability, Best Topped Burger, and MyPlate Burger. Consumers can enter one, two or all three categories. The top two recipes in each category will be put to public vote to determine the grand prize winning recipes. With a total of $8,500 up for grabs, the grand prize winner will walk away with $5,000 in cash and gift cards. The contest begins Saturday, June 1 on MushroomInfo.com.
About The Mushroom Council:
The Mushroom Council is composed of fresh market producers or importers who average more than 500,000 pounds of mushrooms produced or imported annually. The mushroom program is authorized by the Mushroom Promotion, Research and Consumer Information Act of 1990 and is administered by the Mushroom Council under the supervision of the Agricultural Marketing Service. Research and promotion programs help to expand, maintain and develop markets for individual agricultural commodities in the United States and abroad. These industry self-help programs are requested and funded by the industry groups that they serve. For more information on the Mushroom Council, visit mushroomcouncil.org.
Source: The Mushroom Council
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While studies have shown transporting strawberries and some other produce items in a modified atmosphere extends the quality and lifespan of the items, how safe are these food items to eat that have been exposed to carbon dioxide (CO2) for nearly a week?
Rich Macleod, a scientist and basically the manager of the pallet divison for Transfresh Corp. feels this is a reasonable question for people to ask.
“The use of carbon dioxide in the handling of perishables is incredibally common,” Macleod states. He points to the use of CO2 in soda, which are the bubbles you see.
As for TransFresh, Macleod says the Organic Material Research Institute has certified the Tectrol application as organic. “So we are certified for use as an organic product,” he states. “The impact of CO2 in terms of maintaining the quality of the product….using a gas we breath in the environment, is an excellent trade off for what you get for enjoying more strawberries.”
As previously reported in this series, using the pallet covered system, Tectrol (CO2), results in less decay in strawberries (see chart).
Macleod, who started out as a lab assistant with a masters degree in post harvest science, sees the next step in research being to define what CO2 does for the nutrient value of strawberries. Such a study has never been done, he notes. He is hopeful such research will take place within the next five years.
While Tectrol’s primary use is with strawberries, it also is used with raspberries, blueberries and other items.
However, it also is found in containers on shipments by boat with items such as avocados, asparagus, and stone fruit for both imports and exports that are in transit eight to 10 days.
“Your cut salads are all cousins to the wrapped pallet program (with modified atmospheres). In fact, the cut salad program preceeded the pallet covered program,” Macleod says.
(This is Part 5 0f 6, featuring an interview with Rich Macleod, vice president, pallet division North America for TransFresh Corp., Salinas, CA. He has been with company since 1976, and has a masters degree in post harvest science from the University of California, Davis.)
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Grower/shippers in California’s San Joaquin Valley report good shipments of quality California stone fruit in the last half of May and it should pick up even more with the month of June.
SOME PRODUCE RATES ON STONE FRUIT OUT OF THE SAN JOAQUIN VALLEY HAVE EXCEED $9,000 TO BOSTON DURING THE PAST WEEK.
Yellow and white peaches, as well as yellow and white nectarines have been moving for the past month.
Peak stone fruit shipments will be occurring the last half of June and July, with about average shipments seen for the season.
PEARS – California pear shipments will start the earlier than at least the past couple of years. Loadings are expected to get underway around July 9th.
Washington state
Northwest cherry shippers, for the first time in six years, expect good volume shipments for cherries in June. The first shipments of cherries in the state could start from June 1 through June 3.
Barring some bad weather (which would probably be rain), full bore cherry shipments should be occurring in time for the Fourth of the July for the first time since 2007.
The record shipments of 23 million 20-pound boxes of Northwest cherries last year was a 23% increase over the 2011 crop.
The Northwest will likely harvest a cherry crop in the 18 million to 20 million carton range in 2013.
San Joaquin Valley stone fruit – grossing about $8,800 to Boston.
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While total Florida spring produce volume is winding down, some other areas in the East are shipping, or will be soon.
Florida red potato shipments are about two weeks later than usual as a series of winter freezes and heavy spring rains damaged the crop and could cut yields by as much as 50% on the front end of the red potato season. Shipments got underway around Palatka, Fla. about the second week of May. South Florida red spud loadings finished up in mid-May around Lake Wales.
Watermelons shipments got off to a shaky start from Southern Florida, but quality has improved and product is coming in steady volume out of the Ft. Meyers and Arcadia areas. The harvest gradually moves northward over the next few weeks, before shifting to Georgia around June 15-20, about two weeks later than usual.
As Florida veggie loadings decline, the transition from central Florida to southern Georgia is bringing lighter-than-normal volume on some vegetables. which are behind two weeks or more due to weather.
Georgia bell peppers and cucumbers are still moving in light volume and decent shipments are not expected until early to mid-June. Squash and bean shipments from south Georgia are now ending.
Vidalia onions
While it was rough start for Vidalia onion shipments this year, with seed stem problems, better weather is making life easier for both shippers and truckers.
While no official crop estimates have been made, observers see total Vidalia onion loadings at around 4.5 million boxes this season.
Seed stem has adversely about 30% to 40% of Vidalia crops this year.
North Carolina
Sweet corn shipments should get under way in mid-June, at least two weeks later than normal. A similar situation exists with lettuce……Currently, cilantro and kale are being shipped.
South Georgia vegetables – grossing about $2600 to New York City.
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The Skagit Valley north of Seattle, WA has become an important produce shipping area over the past couple of decades and has particularly become known for its quality fresh potatoes. Thus, with the collapse May 24 of a bridge in the area on Interstate 5, it is going to mean problems for produce truckers, and Skagit Valley shippers, not to mention big rigs just passing through the area.
Both truckers and farmers are constantly facing new challenges and this is certainly another one.
The Skagit Valley has built an admirable reputation for growing and shipping conventional red, white, gold and purple potatoes as well as organic red and russet potatoes, that are shipped all over the country.
A temporary bridge is expected to be in place in a few weeks, but transportation over this portion of I-5 certainly will not be back to normal when Skagit Valley potato shipments get underway in August.
The bridge collapse sent cars and people into the river. Three people were sent to area hospitals for treatment, but there were no fatalities.
It has been reported that an oversized and overweight big rig struck a girder at the top of the bridge, causing the collapse.
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Vancouver, B.C. – The outlook for British Columbia’s 2013 blueberry crop is strong, according to the British Columbia Blueberry Council. If current weather trends hold, picking could start as early as the first week of July, coming in a couple of weeks earlier than last year’s harvest.
Early varieties of blueberry are already in full bloom, with later varieties also progressing well. Although it’s too early in the season to predict the size of the harvest, the region has had great weather for pollination. While there have been reports of some farms experiencing a shortage of bees, British Columbia is expecting an ample supply of good quality blueberries for the 2013 season.
“The last couple of years have been record crops for BC, but picking has started late,” said Debbie Etsell, executive director of the BC Blueberry Council. “The combination of the mild winter and warm spring this year puts us on track for a harvest that is more typical, as far as timing goes, starting around the first or second week of July.”
About the British Columbia Blueberry Council
The British Columbia Blueberry Council represents over 800 blueberry growers, located in some of Canada’s most rich and fertile farmland. Plantings of premium quality highbush blueberries top 11,000 hectares in British Columbia and produce upwards of 55 million kilograms of blueberries annually. With more than $1 billion in sales in the past five years, Canada is the third largest national producer of sweet and juicy highbush blueberries in the world. Available fresh in B.C. from July through October, BC blueberries are also frozen, dried, juiced, puréed and powdered, available for year round-distribution throughout Canada and around the world.
Source: British Columbia Blueberry Council
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(Note: This was originally planned as a five-part series, but is now turning into a 6-part series as I keep finding more information that is not only interesting, but I believe can be of great value to you as a produce trucker. Also, the latest strawberry purchase at my local Wal-Mart, was again this season, a frustrating experience. While the berries had good color protected in the clamshell container, they turned out to be soft and spongy once I got home and opened it.
Part IV of this series, may provide a clue why my strawberry purchase was disappointing, and why your delivery of some strawberries, may be cost you a claim or rejection at destination. — Bill Martin)
For example, several produce shippers of fresh strawberries choose to use a non-sealed bag type system, according to Rich Macleod of TransFresh Corp., Salinas, CA, whose product is Tectrol.
In this series, I have used information from a study by the University of California, Davis/University of Florida study showing the advantages for truckers who have strawberry loads with palletized sealed bags using carbon dioxide (CO2). The study also is quite favorable to TransFresh. I’m referring to the research, Comparison of Pallet Cover Systems to Maintain Strawberry fruit Quality During Transit.
If I had not known Rich Macleod for years, being familar with his work, his concern for produce truckers and in general his honesty and integrity, plus his impressive career, I might be a bit wary of a study conducted in part by his alma mater, UC Davis, that is favorable to his company.
However, there was another study commissioned by PEAKfresh, a competitor of TransFresh. It was conducted by the Horticulture and crop Science Department at Cal Poly State University, San Luis Obispo, entitled, Comparison of the Efficacy of the PEAKfresh and Tectrol Systems for Maintaining Strawberry Quality.
This study can be found on both the PEAKfresh and TransFresh websites.
In part the research states, “Berries in PEAKfresh treated pallets became softer on average than berreis in the Tectrol treated pallets during cross-country shipments, and this is in agreement with previous research on the effect of elevated CO2 on strawberry firmness.”
Additionally the PEAKfresh commissioned study notes after a two-day shelf life, fruit from the Tectrol pallet system exhibited significantly less decay, from 3% to 7% than other systems evaluated.
So if research is showing that non-sealed pallet/bag systems results in more softness and decay in strawberries, why doesn’t everyone use the sealed system?
Rich Macleod says, “There is a significant price difference between an unsealed bag and a sealed MAP system (Tectrol). Obviously there is a lot more sophistication in materials, equipment and man power to create a sealed MAP.”
Macleod has been told the open bag systems cost around $8 to $12-plus per bag, while Tectrol charges its shippers $19.25 per service.
“Prices can range from $24/pallet to $30/pallet for either bag or service,” Macleod says.
Continuing, he states, “First off, if you are using the open bag system, you are not injecting any CO2. If you are using MAP (Tectrol), you not only are injecting CO2 or other gasses, you are trying to keep those gasses contained or sealed inside the system.”
Thus, Macleod wants the Tectrol CO2 levels to hit between 10% and 18% inside the sealed Tectrol bag upon arrival at destination. Thus, this process requires more material, specialized bags, sealing tape, CO2 injection machinery, etc.
So for obvious reasons, the Tectrol process costs a shipper more money, and apparently some shippers would rather risk strawberry quality shipped to customers, than pay more.
The old saying, “you pay for what you get” certainly seems to apply to modified atmosphere shipments of strawberries.
“Shippers who recommend and sell open bags enjoy a significant cost advatange over those recommending and selling a MAP like Tectrol. However, as a retailer, given the UC Davis data, why would you pay the same for an open bag service as a true MAP service,” Macleod asks.
And I, as a consumer, am wondering if Wal-Mart or their suppliers are not trying to cut corners on what they pay for strawberries because those berries are trucked across country in unsealed bags. It is the peak strawberry season, and I can’t seem to buy any decent strawberries!
(This is Part 4 0f 6 featuring an interview with Rich Macleod, vice president, pallet division North America for TransFresh Corp., Salinas, CA. He has been with the company since 1976, and has a masters degree in post harvest science from the University of California, Davis.)
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In-Transit IssuesCal Poly State Univeristy , CO2 , feature , pallets TransFresh , PEAKfresh , Rich Macleod , strawberries , strawberry , Tectrol , transport , UC Davis , Wal-Mart
