Freezing temperatures across a wide swath of Mexico the night of Feb. 3-4 have made a big impact in available fresh produce. Expect the effects to be felt in your supermarket any day now.
From The Packer Feb 4th, 2011
By Andy Nelson
The freeze reached fields as far south as southern Sinaloa. Crops in the border state of Sonora could be devastated.
“The last time there was a freeze of this severity was 1957,” said Jerry Wagner, director of sales and marketing for Nogales, Ariz.-based Farmer’s Best. “It’s still too early to tell, but there’s a lot of damage.”
All of the growing regions Farmer’s Best ships from suffered freezing temperatures, Wagner said. The company’s full line of vegetables, including tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers and squash, was likely affected.
One industry veteran told Jesse Driskill, operations manager of the Nogales office of Meyer LLC, that Mexico had not had a freeze like this in 60 years.
What made this one even worse, Driskill said, is that forecasts were 5 to 10 degrees higher than what temperatures wound up being. Many growers took precautions, he said, but they did not harvest early because they did not expect it to get so cold.
…
From the Digital Journal
Mexico loses 80-100% of crops to freeze, US prices to skyrocket
Houston – The cold weather experienced across much of the US in early February made its way deep into Mexico and early reports estimate 80-100 percent crop losses which are having an immediate impact on prices at US grocery stores with more volatility to come.
Wholesale food suppliers have already sent notices to supermarket retailers describing the produce losses in Mexico and the impact shoppers can expect. Sysco sent out a release(pdf) this week stating the early February freeze reached as far south as Los Mochis and south of Culiacan, both located in the state of Sinaloa, along the Gulf of California. The freezing temperatures were the worst the region has seen since 1957. According to Sysco’s notice sent out this week:
“The early reports are still coming in but most are showing losses of crops in the range of 80 to 100%. Even shade house product was hit by the extremely cold temps. It will take 7-10 days to have a clearer picture frome growers and field supervisors, but these growing regions haven’t had cold like this in over half a century.”
At this time of year, Mexico is a major supplier to the US and Canada for green beans, cucumbers, squash, eggplant, asparagus, peppers and round and Roma tomatoes. Compounding the problem is the freezing cold that hit Florida in December and January. Sysco continued with its dire report:
“Florida normally is a major supplier for these items as well but they have already been struck with severe freeze damage in December and January and up until now have had to purchase product out of Mexico to fill their commitments, that is no longer an option.”
Validating that statement, The Packer released a statement at the end of December stating:
“Freeze damage to Florida crops could increase demand for Mexican vegetables for the rest of winter, grower-shippers say.”
That December report noted Florida’s cold temperatures and crop loss but was optimistic over Mexico’s produce, even if prices were climbing. “My gut feeling tells me the Mexican deal is going to be very active,” said Ken Maples, sales manager for Plantation Produce in Mission, Texas, according to The Packer.
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GARY KRAUSE – I am highly reactive to Canola oil -I literally have to watch
everything that has it I even react to Bio Diesel that uses that crap,er alternative
fuel…
Other day I was behind a VW Westfalia with “biodiesel” “Windpower” “Obama-Biden”
etc. Stickers on it. The air was blue with rancid oil smoke. My throat tightened, and I felt nauseous-no kidding. It was the Biodiesel.
Ironically I had a Gr. Uncle who was killed at the Battle of Belleau Wood.The Marines
there were killed by Mustard Gas…
For getting a lot of produce from a limited area, try the “square foot” concept in raised beds. http://timssquarefootgarden.com/
What is soaring food prices in US to the imploding government of Mexico?
This’ll put the incompetent Mexican government under such a tremendous strain that it might imploding and not in the good way like is currently happening in Egypt.
What other democratic government on this planet would, effectively, sit idly by when heavily armed national and foreign drug-communist-forces make battle for control of local and federal authority? The Mexican government has been loosing it’s authority and monopoly of violence for decades, but it’s loosing it ever faster the more of it they loose and how much does it really take before a cowardice incompetent government cave completely to overwhelming authority by armed force and violence by doped up crazed homicidal drug hawking communists?
If the Mexican government implode due to external stress due to internal stress that is ready to act as an evil positive feedback loop, the definition of skyrocketing prices might get redefined completely sooner than would be thought possible.
But the Mexican government doesn’t seem to care all that much about the bigger picture, I think other wise they’d gone all WWII carpet bombing on the drug communists’ rich fat fart hole boxes a long time ago.
Oliver’s comment was about ‘small styrofoam window boxes’, not outside gardens. With such you might grow a few tomatoes or bell peppers, but you wont feed even one person anything like a sufficient or balanced diet. Even a 16′ x 36′ outdoor garden isn’t “feeding” even one person. You might keep a few people in carrots and tomatoes, a few beans or cucumbers, but it takes at least 1/4 acre of good soil to feed a person, if you’re meaning to use a home garden to be self-sufficient. Beets and lettuce wont feed a person for very long. You need corn for meal and animal feed, wheat for bread, these crops take up a good amount of space.
Yes, you might keep yourself and family in fresh vegetables with a small garden, but don’t think it will support your family in the event of disaster.
ES says:
February 12, 2011 at 11:16 am
I apologize.
“It’s time to bring back the idea of winter vegetables. ”
California’s central valley has the potential to produce a lot but this year courts have shut off the water to large areas of the valley. Areas that used to produce tons of produce are now little more than dirt. Many of the larger farms have moved to Mexico where they can get irrigation water. Many of the largest farms in Monterey and Southern Santa Clara counties now have large operations in Mexico.
And I think it is key that California consumers understand that their food bill will skyrocket because of the delta smelt issue and the court rulings. Had there been more US produce in the central valley, the prices would not be quite so high.
ES says:
February 12, 2011 at 11:16 am
Theo Goodwin @ur momisugly February 12, 2011 at 8:35 am
says:
“Excuse me, but how does it serve me if there are plenty of vegetables at higher prices?”
The role of prices is more and more misunderstood since socialists took over institutions in the developped world.
High prices are by far the single most important factor to increase production, regulated low prices sabotage production.
Prices were depressed in the 90s and the first half of the 2000s with disturbing consequences:
Production did no longer meet demand, stocks declined globally but more over farm after farm went bankrupt. The average age of the American farmer is now 58. Where shall new farmers come from and who shall teach them ?
Low food prices cause increase in demand but no increase in production, (except then incidentally, the increase due to the beneficial warming and CO2 fertilization).
This had to lead to higher prices at some point to increase production. And this point is now. And sadly, it conincides with the start of global cooling.
And guess what higher prices will eventually cause: more production and lower prices !
If instead prices are regulated and kept artificially low,
what does it help if prices are low, but not enough food available to feed everyone ?
Look at the Soviet Union in the 1920s or North Korea …
Here is why this site is not credible – If the earth was a continuous temperature gradient and climate dis-stabilization was also continuous it would be relevant. But its not. And cold in Mexico can mean many things. Just as warmth in Greenland can. Right>?!?
But you avoid the technical evaluation for truisms and conspiracy theories.
@ur momisugly JakeW says:
February 12, 2011 at 12:09 pm
Oliver’s comment was about ‘small styrofoam window boxes’, not outside gardens. With such you might grow a few tomatoes or bell peppers, but you wont feed even one person anything like a sufficient or balanced diet. Even a 16′ x 36′ outdoor garden isn’t “feeding” even one person. You might keep a few people in carrots and tomatoes, a few beans or cucumbers, but it takes at least 1/4 acre of good soil to feed a person, if you’re meaning to use a home garden to be self-sufficient. Beets and lettuce wont feed a person for very long. You need corn for meal and animal feed, wheat for bread, these crops take up a good amount of space.
Yes, you might keep yourself and family in fresh vegetables with a small garden, but don’t think it will support your family in the event of disaster.
I don’t totally agree, but a great deal of what you say depends in large part on location. I have a 2500sqft garden in MS that provides nearly year round crops that are sufficient to provide 2 people with most veggies. If I were to grow corn and wheat you are correct that I’d need to expand it considerably. However if one is willing to modify their diet then other crops can substitute for those to some extent, including winter root crops. That said, I have approx. 30 acres I could use, if needed, to provide food, timber or other crops for sale or trade as well family use. The issue is not so much the available land for production – there is plenty of that – but the logistics of distribution to urban areas where there is no land available and everything must be “imported”, and waste “exported” .
Total self sufficiency is an impossibility. No single person can provide everything that is needed for their survival, except at the most basic caveman level and even that is doubtful. Which is why we formed tribes and developed specialties. Some farm, some hunt, some make tools, etc.
Where’d they get their weather forecasts?
“Prices were depressed in the 90s and the first half of the 2000s with disturbing consequences:”
Well, something else happened, too. Mandates for ethanol and soaring demand for high fructose corn sweetener resulted in a lot of land being shifted into corn production and out of wheat, soy, oats, etc. The result is that grain surpluses have disappeared. We basically now live “hand to mouth” in grain production. An untimely frost in the US Midwest will have immediate impact on availability of grains globally. We no longer have a surplus from which we can make up the difference if one small region loses their crop due to flood, drought, or frost.
JTT says:
February 12, 2011 at 1:10 pm
Wrong.
Your ‘warmth’ in Greenland is an illusion caused by the substituion of anomaly for actual temperature.
It does not matter how anomalously warm it might be if the temperature is still tens of degrees below zero.
It does matter in Mexico that it got anomalously cold when the temperature fell from above freezing to below freezing.
And besides, the farmers in Mexico could have been warned of what happened in S. America during their last winter, and been prepared for the hopscotch effect now in it’s 3rd year.
There are several of us here in this board who did sound the alarm, yours truly included. Trouble is, those able to pass the warning were also the ones who actively covered up the 2010 S. American event.
Your allegation of this board being nothing but conspiracy theories is without merit.
Plants love CO2 and warmth.
It’s the severe cooling of frosts that cause crop failures. And, if it gets worse for the next few decades – which it will with the Grand Solar Minimum grinding to its inevitable nadir in 2030 – watch out for widespread famines!
JTT says:
February 12, 2011 at 1:10 pm
Here is why this site is not credible – If the earth was a continuous temperature gradient and climate dis-stabilization was also continuous it would be relevant. But its not. And cold in Mexico can mean many things. Just as warmth in Greenland can. Right>?!?
Here is why YOU are not credible. This site is loaded with scientific articles and discussions that make a mockery of warmist alarmism. The sarcastic comments you see in this thread are often from people who have read that science and this story is just an example of a major event the warmists repeatedly said would be a thing of the past, and when it happens they say they predicted it. So if you think the sarcasm and disparaging remarks are not credible, I suggest a couple of options.
1) Jump into any of the science threads and read. Debate if you disagree.
2) If you have a credible scientific comment to make about this event, then make it. I’ve little doubt you will get a response about the science you state.
What you don’t get about this site is when the warmist alarmazoids venture into a science discussion, they get torn to shreds. So they carefully avoid the actual science. They deserve the disparaging remarks about their work and about themselves, and it will only get worse until they either admit they are hopelessly wrong are put some actual real science with real data on the table to show they are right.
Absent that, they are merely charlatans, clowns and thieves.
But you avoid the technical evaluation for truisms and conspiracy theories.
A little bit off topic, but a very relevant story, similar to the pursuit of the false Gods of Global Warming by the mainstream media.
Toyota: The Media Owe You an Apology
All the reasons why the public doesn’t trust the media crystallized in the Toyota fiasco, writes Ed Wallace
http://www.businessweek.com/lifestyle/content/feb2011/bw20110210_848076.htm?chan=rss_topStories_ssi_5
No problems, we have enough oil to produce plastic film to construct hot-houses to protect the plants from freezing conditions caused by Global Warming.
The facts is that the human population is highly unlikely to be devastated by either warming OR cooling. The difference between humans and animals is that animals are either beneficiaries or victims of changes in their environment, but they don’t have any choice in the matter. Humans are capable of not only making choices, but making changes as well.
We haven’t lived in caves for thousands of years. We build everything from small houses to skyscrapers and make them as warm or as cold as want inside. We’ve been genetically engineering crops and livestock for centuries via selective breeding to produce species that are productive in places where none were before. Where there is desert, we irrigate. Swamps? Drain them. Rivers in the wrong place? Divert them, dam them. We not only have choices, we have control.
There’s no much mother nature can do to devastate the human population on a global basis anymore. We can engineer, build and adapt the environment to our needs, we need only the will and the energy supply.
The only thing that could devastate the global human population is…
Humans.
Ay Caramba!
“even a small styrofoam box indoors near a window in winter, will give you some food, and its going to be fresh, no chem if youre smart, and as close to free as the cost of the seeds.”
The organic hobby gardeners have pretty much guaranteed that virtually no common fruit or vegetable is likely to survive anywhere in or around my entire county. We have pretty much every blight, disease, and pest you can think of. I’m reminded of the fundamentalist types who eschew medical care, resulting in teenagers dying from strep or ear infections.
I grow all my own tomatoes, (5 varieties) spinach, peppers, bell, and jalepeno and thai. Beet root, cucumbers (two types) Hops for home brew beer. Black and blue berries, Apples (3 varieties), plums, apricots, quince, Cherries, figs, parsley, horse raddish, artichokes, Jerusalem artichokes, pears, juniper berries, pumpkins, eggplant and brocoli, cauliflower, chives, green onions and garlic. I also keep fowl, sheep and goats for meat. Fish are in the river. I irrigate by pump from a river in drought and by roof gathered rain water tanks otherwise.
I don’t grow wheat, corn, potatoes or tropical exotic stuff. My garden is raised beds built of sheep, horse, chook manure mixed with local soils and sweetened according to crop with crushed limestone dust. I make most of my own fertilizer by fermenting garden waste in 100 liter bins of water for a couple of months and by adding animal dung to the soil in the winter months. My garden size total up is about 500 sq meters and growing every year as I add one or two new raised beds.
I spend about 10 hours a week in the garden averaged over a year, of course some months I spend 1 hour/week, others more like 25hours/week. The animals take up about another 2 hours a week to care for, the sheep being the most difficult because they have to be sheared, although the fleece is worth a pretty penny.
Yeah, I could get a real job and make more money for 11 hours a week, maybe, but it would come with some negatives, like sitting down instead of being out in the sun and rain digging and playing, watching the clouds and smelling the roses grow. And we wouldn’t eat nearly as good.
My favorite game is price comparison at the super market. Believe me, we eat like aristocrats!
I started garden years ago, but with no practical experience. Totally self taught, trial and error, plus a bunch of reading. Any one who likes to work with their hands can do it. It’s the perfect thing for those with a skeptic and independent mind. Plus, as a bonus when you get into a debate with a Latte-sipping Intellectual prig who is into “slow food” in order to “save the planet,” but wouldn’t know spade from bucket, you can claim the moral high ground.
Carl Bussjaeger says:
February 12, 2011 at 10:55 am
Oliver Ramsay (February 12, 2011 at 7:56 am) yammered: “No, it won’t!”
“It will give you a sprig of parsley for your styrofoam pasta.”
“Agriculture produces food.”
————————————————-
Well, Carl, your tone is disagreeable and smug, so it’s no surprise that you can’t read straight, you leap to ludicrous conclusions and you delude yourself as to the magnificence of your gardening enterprise.
Since you’re not really talking about styrofoam window boxes but would prefer to tell us about your extraordinary success with tomatoes, I’ll just point out that it’s not difficult to calculate how much land, time, water and (wow! you did that yourself?) compost it takes to raise the grains, vegetables and fruits that an individual or family needs to survive or thrive.
This year, after you’ve forced a bushel of unwanted zucchini into the arms of your unfortunate neighbours, why not just reflect on all the food you BUY and how it came to be available?
—
Gary Krause, thank you for a more civil comment.
The truth is that you didn’t feed anybody’s family on a garden that size unless it was growing the crop that R.S.Brown alluded to. Yes, you get a bunch of nice, fresh veg. but that’s just a small part of the story.
As for the name of rapeseed; that’s still how it’s called in the UK. Canola was introduced for the genetically modified version. The name rape comes from the German Raps, which has nothing to do with violating anybody or anything.
Btw, for years I grew a much larger garden than what youre talking about. I tilled it with a horse and cut ice from the river for storage. I canned hundreds of quarts of wild fruit each year… etc. It was fun but it still wasn’t self-sufficient.
Garry Krause
“The middle nineteenth homesteaders of Alberta lived on the land during periods of cold. They prospered by working the land and building local markets that resulted in today’s modern produce market in Canada.” Their efforts are to be admired for sure. But it was terribly inefficient and hard. My grandparents settled in central Alberta in 1908 and I am rather familiar with homesteading agricultural techniques.
But surely you don’t REALLY think that today, city folks all across the northern hemisphere can do that.
I really do not get what you are attempting to say….that we ask the one million people in Edmonton and Calgary (and tens of millions of other city dwellers in cold northern cities) to start mini gardens to supply food year round and forget imports? That is naive “back to the land” eco babble. We are talking about efficiently and safely feeding millions of people. Utopian, small-scale farming concepts just don’t feed masses of people. Period. It makes a few back-to-the-landers feel good.
Modern agriculture frees about 98 to 99 percent of society to work in medicine, engineering, health care, education and a myriad of other professions and services that make our society what it is…and it is not that bad based on the life expectancy of people today.
There are six billion folks on earth that need to be fed. Subsistence farming is horrifically in efficient. I learned that on my dozen trips to northern China where one peasant farmer feeds one other person. The subsistence farming you propose (are you saying that??) is a terrible waste of human effort and land. Who is going to mind the store if Calgarians are out hoeing the spuds and cabbage? I ain’t gonna play well in Cowtown. ☺
It is too late, but rational minds could decide to re open California to irrigated crops like the years under Bush.
Maybe this year, alternative media will cover food inflation. Energy and food prices have been removed from the consumer price index because that is where the inflation is.
Keep getting closer to rioting or civil conflicts. Here.
This couldn’t have come at a worse time. Just when Odumma announced heating assistance cut of 50% to the poor.
connect the dots, why do you think Odumma is pushing for extending the wireless internet to everyone while cutting funding for heating oil? SO THEY CAN SPY ON EVERYONE! Especially those in remote areas more likely to be the “survivalists”?