A message from one of our produce distributors:

Freezing temperatures spread across a wide area of Southern California, Arizona, Texas and Mexico the night of Feb. 3-4 with temperatures hitting as low as 18 degrees. This has had a huge effect on supplies of  bananas, citrus, row crops, salads, warm weather vegetables, melons and other winter vegetables.

These four states have been battling  freezing temperatures for the past few weeks which range from 20-30 degrees at night. This has already caused limited markets and high prices on the many staple organic items. The freeze also reached fields as far south as southern Sinaloa, Mexico and as far north as Coachella, CA.

Expect higher prices & limited availability on peppers, tomatoes, zucchini, hard squash and cucumbers for up to 12 weeks.

One Southern California grower has lost their melon and corn crops for late spring/summer. All row crops will be very limited for the rest of the winter season until we transition back to Northern California produce in April.

We may expect to see smaller sizing, limited availability and slight chill damage on various produce items. This is the scenario for the next 8 -12 weeks.

Tags: crop freeze, organic produce, Organic Produce Availability, weather update

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 16th, 2011 at 10:47 am and is filed under Healthy Updates Newsletter. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.