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.
Planting season has not yet started in the US.
I haven’t been posting much on this WUWT blog as I see my work here is almost done here.
I have been working in other Internet areas to help bring about the justice the world most desperately needs.
I implore you guys here, if you want to be a part of the world wide revolution taking place, please do your part and speak up about the ethanol subsidies and put an emergency end to them. Just get off your computers, get on the phone, email those with influence, and just do it yourselves. We still have time.
Thank You all My Brothers and Sisters.
Greenhouses can be made to work on the grand commercial scale in a cooler climate.
See the English Thanet-Earth company here: http://www.thanetearth.com/about-us.html
They recycle all their CO2 for boosting crop yields too.
Planting season has not yet started in the US.
I haven’t been posting much on this WUWT blog as I see my work here is almost done .
I’ve been working in other Internet areas to help bring about the justice the world most desperately needs, and it is working.
I implore you guys here, if you want to be a part of the world wide revolution taking place, please do your part and speak up about the idiotic ethanol subsidies and put an emergency end to them. This will help introduce a greater variety of crops this summer we will surely need. Just email those with influence, get off your computers, get on the phone, and just do it yourselves. We still have time.
If there’s anyone else out there with the credibility you guys have on WUWT, Not, you will accomplish this task.
Thank You all My Brothers and Sisters.
When I lived in New Zealand, in the Wairarapa as significant fruit growing region, wine growers used to hire helicopters to “circulate” the still, frosty, air over vinyards during cold periods. And as usual, like in Australia, these growers had no insurance, and looked to the Gubmint….errmmm…I mean sucker taxpayers…for a bailout!
Revolution is indeed needed. The Tunisian event may lead to that.
RE: “China Town” all over again.
Who are the folks that funded the sucessful lawsuit for the benefit of presumably-endangered delta smelt that resulted in shutting off of water for the croplands and orchards in the Central Valley? The really rich city guys who want cheap land for their country estates and hobby farms, that’s who.
After the farmers and ag companies go bust and sell off the land for pennies on the dollar and after the rich city guys snap up the land, new studies will find the delta smelt is not all that endangered, and the water will once again flow into the valley. After all, estates with big swimming pools, horses and hobby vineyards and country clubs with new golf courses will need lots of fresh water.
During the Great Depression over 30% of all Americans lived on farms. With over 30% of all other Americans out of work, the chicken you might get from a relative who still lived on a farm made a big difference, back then.
Far too many Americans are now completely divorced from the land. For all that folk have said, on this site, about “efficiency,” the result of becoming overly dependant on agribusiness is a sort of slavery. Nor can the consequences of being “free” from the family farm be measured merely in terms of nourishment. Many social ills have their roots in the fact the father no longer could afford to work at home, and later the mother could not afford to work at home either.
My farm runs at a loss, but we turn a profit by running a day-care for all the parents who are “free” to work their poor fingers to the bone, paying for homes they barely use, other than as a bedroom. Our pitch-to-the-public is that the children can experience what a farm is like. The children we get are amazingly clueless, when it comes to anything that has to do with the outdoors. Surprisingly often a child will make a statement that reveals stunning ignorance about matters which American children once knew as a matter of fact.
Once I took the kids out to pull some carrots, and one little girl wrinkled her nose in disgust. She said, “Why do you get carrots from the icky dirt, instead of a clean store?” When I explained that all carrots came from the dirt, her eyes grew wide with wonder.
I am often troubled by what the children are fed, on a daily basis. I may not like to agree with the first lady about anything, but Ms. Obama is right to point out that proper nourishment is vital. Many children have a breakfast that amounts to sugar and starch, maybe with milk (if there is any time.) Mothers have no time for eggs, toast and bacon, with orange juice and a half-grapefruit, it seems. It is rush, rush, rush, to get a so-called “freedom,” (which is always off in some tomorrow, and never today.)
Maybe it makes me seem anti-progress, but I made video gadgets illegal right off the bat. Little children would arrive, retire to a corner, and diddle a video gadget with their thumbs, never even raising their eyes to look around. When such toys were banned, some children went through a brief withdrawal, but swiftly learned to interact socially. Of course this involves a lot of childish quarreling, but quarreling is how small children learn about things such as sharing.
One charming little girl arrived amazingly clumsy. She quite literally could not walk on a surface that was not flat as a floor or a sidewalk. Walking on a path in the woods on her first day, she fell five times during a tour I was giving her parents. I was worried, but her parents were eager that she “experience nature,” and agreed not to sue me, if the child scraped her knees. She did scrape her knees, often, but within only fourteen days she was hopping from rock to rock on a stone wall, with the other children. Kids will adapt, if you only give them a chance.
It turns out many cases of ADD can be cured with the most common-sense things: Make sure a child has ten hours of sleep, proper meals, and outdoor exercise. To give such children a pill displays sheer laziness on the part of adults, but the adults always protest, “I’m so overworked!” And they call it “freedom.”
I respect and admire any and all who attempt any sort of back-to-nature gardening or cottage industry, though it should be obvious to all you won’t get rich. (If it made much money, more would do it.)
Many quit, as soon as they understand how much toil is involved in getting-back-to-nature. There is no getting around the fact farming of any sort can be very uncomfortable. The sun is not always shining and the birds are not always singing, that’s for sure. And dirt is always dirty, and manure sure does stink. However there are benefits which cannot be measured by economists, with their musty charts and inky graphs.
I recall reading somewhere that Thomas Jefferson worried what would become of our democracy when people moved off the family farms. We are now witnessing what he worried about.
It was a hot freeze. Algore told me so.
Actually ethanol has had more to do with the price of food this past year. We subsidize ethanol and use 15% (?) of our corn for this product. That causes a increase in price for food producers, example cereal, up goes supper market price. I am in favor of running out of the picture the global warming crow, but the ethanol fools are even more dangerous. They will starve millions of poor people to death in third world countries.
sceptical me says:
Greenhouses can be made to work on the grand commercial scale in a cooler climate.
They can be use year round for sure, but on large scale, that is not practically, environmentally or economically correct.
I have worked with greenhouse producers (at 49 to 55° N lat) and even grown winter crops of cauliflower (WAY back in time). I have attended GH operations in Iceland ~64°N lat. I conducted applied research on GH energy conservation in th early 8Os. Two years ago I completed a major report on organic production of GH crops. I was a “professional” horticulturist for over 40 years.
GHs offer a great way to produce crops in cold climates BUT are very limited in winter.
Winter production of greenhouse crops is VERY limited in winter for many reasons. (I am NOT talking about small operations. I am referring to their ability to “feed the masses.”) The main greenhouse crops are peppers, tomatoes and cucumbers although many others are grown as well. These crops are indeterminate and produce for extended periods (months) vs. just one harvest (say) like cauliflower. The main crops produce exceptionally high yields over time..they are also high value crops.
Winter light levels in northern latitudes are abysmally low for weeks. A transplant of cauliflower planted in the field on May 1, will produce a mature head by (what?) say, August 1 .. about 90 days. (I think less actually. Broccoli is about 60 days.) Now that same transplant put in a GH on November 1, will not produce a marketable head for about 5 months…more like 150 days. And its yield (head mass) will be less as I recall. And the heating costs?!?!
I recall doing energy audits of GHs in the 80s. Approx two thirds of a GH annual energy budget is used in one third of the year…Nov through Feb….. when light levels are the lowest. High energy costs and lowest production…not a great comination.
Yes, artificial lighting can be used in GHs in winter. And you could use solar and wind electricity for lighting. Crops can also be grown in indoor factories. BUT… the actual cost and environmental costs of such ventures are prohibitive. A wild guess that tomatoes (not a food necessity) pridued in the dead of winter would probably cost $30 a pound. That’s why tomatoes come from CA and MX for several weeks in winter. In Alberta, GHs supply tomatoes from between about March to November with peak production between about May and August when light levels are best.
We can store field-grown potatoes, rutabagas, cabbages and carrots (for example) for months. But storages are very expensive to construct and operate. Again, it makes more economic sense to produce elsewhere in winter. Again…I am speaking of feeding the masses. Back-to-the-landers can eke out a living with root cellars and small greenhouses.
For many fresh vegetables, it is less expensive and more environmentally sound to produce crops in southern climes and transport them.
Regards
Clive
CLIVE
For many fresh vegetables, it is less expensive and more environmentally sound to produce crops in southern climes and transport them. >>
All your points seem valid, but I think you missed the context. This discussion was triggered by events in Mexico which raise the question; What happens if a cooling earth results in southern climes being unable to produce enough food to transport in the first place?
That changes the equation. We live in an affluent society where “want” and “need” mean the same thing. They don’t. We want a new car. We need food. In the event that a cooling earth changes the equation, the economics that mean GH and other approaches are not viable change, and they change a lot. Consider GH technology not for Iceland for example, but for Mexico, in a climate a couple of degrees cooler than optimal due to global cooling. Or for giant stretches of Saharan desert where the purpose would be to contain moisture rather than heat.
There should be little doubt over the next few years if we are facing a cooling trend or not. If so, the alarmists will start screaming doom and gloom just like they did in the 70’s and demanding action, money for research, government programs.
And the solution to any real problems that arise will be exactly the same as it always has been. Some things will go up in value, others down, definitions of want and need will be adjusted. Things that weren’t economicaly viable in the past will become so, changes in value will result in new technologies and techniques that maximize value efficiency and production, and the world will move on without any major disruptions.
Unless of course we’re dumb enough to let the IPCC, the UN, and various other mountains of blood sucking leeches fool us into letting them help. They’ll probably even claim they should be allowed to because of the stellar job they did with the warming cycle. Leeches never change, they just suck more blood no matter what.
A cooling earth is economically and politically destabilizing. Bad weather was a major factor in the UK’s short term economic downturn this winter. My grandfather, a department store manager, used to say that shopping days lost to bad weather never come back. Our economy is dependent to a large degree on frivolous impulsive shopping that is weather related. Food prices obviously also factor into the climate-economy link.
Many if not most industrial economies are up to their eyeballs in debt, accrued on the blissful assumption of never-ending economic growth. If climate puts a significant brake on economies, then expect more Greece and Ireland scenarios – in nations bigger than Greece or Ireland.
I just want to remind everyone that it is farms AND farmer’s surplus that make cities POSSIBLE. Any event that removes our surplus makes cities untenable. GK
A 25 lb sack of dried beans is fairly cheap, but will supply a lot of bean sprouts in a pinch, and bean sprouts are a fresh vegetable. Untreated radish seed makes yummy spicy sprouts. A sack of rice, a couple of sacks of beans, and peas and lentils, and some winter squash kept cool and dry will get a family through a bad time, especially with some canned fish or meat in the freezer. Of course, all that has to be stocked in at the end of summer, and depends on someone somewhere being able to grow rice and beans and squash. Great stuff if you are snowed in!
Well, this discussion is not to debate the ecomony of scales in any particular industry. Any garden will be better than no garden at all when the produce section of your favorite shop is empty. Additionally, no expectations for those with no land to produce any sort of veggie; however, the point here is we suddenly with seeming surprise see many important areas of agrigulture production being stunted. Are your cupboards full?
As for garden size, we extract plenty from our garden to enjoy an annual bounty despite some who argue I do not. WUWT???
Not everyone is blessed with the amount of land we own. But is it not interesting that community gardens are on the rise and offer those with the ambition and foresight to engage in produce gardening. It is a rewarding activity of plentiful food and rewarding accomplishment.
Surely, (don’t call me Shirley) we shop at the super markets…but we also enjoy the fruits (punn?) of our labor. Try gardening on any scale.
Scoffers…. go scoff…
Be good. 🙂
oops, I see my fingers are thickening.
Should read: As for garden size, we extract plenty from our garden to enjoy an annual bounty despite some who argue I do not. WUWT???
…and: But it is interesting that community gardens are on the rise and offer those with the ambition and foresight to engage in produce gardening. It is a rewarding activity of plentiful food and rewarding accomplishment.
(could it be the homemade beer? No way.)
In the year Eighteen-hundred-and-froze-to-death (1815) crops failed all over New England, which is at the northern edge of the area where it is normally possible to grow corn. That year it became impossible. There were frosts in both July and August, which meant there was no corn at all that year: No corn for silage for cows, no corn for chickens to peck, no cornmeal for the poor folk who couldn’t afford flour. People faced a grim winter, but at first they had plenty of meat, because they had to butcher a lot of their livestock, because even the hay crop was tiny, and there was no way to keep their livestock alive through the winter. Entire herds of dairy cows became meat. (The rich folk, who didn’t want to butcher their horses, had to import hay from Pennsylvania.)
Poorer folk faced starvation as the especially bitter winter set in. Starvation wasn’t all that appealing, so all sorts of ingenious foods were used. Acorns were boiled to remove the tannic acid, and became a form of flour. Cattail roots and inner white pine bark produced other flours. Certain weeds, like dandilion and pokeweed, were dug up in the late fall, after they became a dorment root, and later warmed by the fire, so the sprouts that sprang from the roots, (as the plants thought it was spring,) could be eaten as a vegatable. So, in the end, few actually starved, though many went hungry.
One neat local story involves a cantankerous farmer who was notorious for planting odd crops. For some reason he had the intuition it was unwise to plant corn that year. Perhaps he noticed the brilliant sunsets caused by Tamboro’s volcanic ash, and recalled some lore about such sunsets. Whatever the reason was, he was a sort of laughing stock in the spring for planting a less-than-profitable strain of wheat that happened to be frost-tollerant. (The summer before had been very warm, in New England.) In the end, as all the other farmers faced crop-failures, he harvested a bumper crop. As the story goes, he kept his town alive that winter.
Census figures show that 1810 was a high water mark for many New England towns. Those folk may not have been into “immediate gratification” to the degree we are, but one summer like that was all many needed, to convince them a “southern” place like the frontier of Ohio sounded a heck of a lot better than frosts in July and August in New England. Most town’s populations had recovered by the 1960’s, but there are still a few towns in rural New England that had more people living in them in 1810 than live there now, 200 years later.
And the moral of the story is? Make friends with a North Dakota farmer, and see if you can buy a couple pounds of his seed-wheat.
@ur momisugly Gary Krause,
Nobody’s disparaging your garden, just your claim that “… we manage to grow enough produce from a 16′ by 36′ garden to feed ourselves and other family for better than a year:”
I whole-heartedly share your enthusiasm for tilling the soil, but not your proclivity for exaggeration.
Clive,
I liked your pragmatism, and the sensible points you made about greenhouse gardening.
In the old days it was simply impossible to get fresh tomatoes in the dead of winter. People canned, and before the Bell Canning Jar was invented in 1885, people pickled just about everything in sight, in big crock pots, including pig’s feet and herring.
Most every home had a root cellar, and an apple barrel, and an winter-evening chore was to carefully go through the apple barrel and remove the apples that were starting to go bad, because everyone knew “one bad apple can spoil the whole barrel.”
The bad apples were not thrown out, but rather pared with the bad spot removed. The pig got the peelings. Nothing was wasted, but even so stuff ran out, as winter dragged on. Cabbages, squash, carrots, turnips, parsnips, and even potatoes got more and more grungy and withered, as the months past. By Lent there was a very practical reason for the fasting. Things were simply running out.
Regarding tomatoes, my Great-grandmother, (born in 1851,) grew them in her garden, but forbid my Grandfather, (born in 1888,) from eating them. She grew them as a “ornamental,” and called them “love apples.” They were deemed a dangerous aphrodisiac, libel to “enflame the passions.” The Italian gardener ate them, and had eight children, which, in my Great-grandmother’s mind, proved her point.
That avoided the whole problem of how to get them in January, I suppose.
Regarding greenhouses: I’m sure, on a small scale, people can use this technology, which our great-grandparents lacked, to produce a small amount of mid-winter greens, and even reduce the heating bills of their houses, if ingeniously attached to the southern sides of their abodes.
However in terms of agribusiness? Forget it. For the reasons Clive makes so clear.
America would be EXPORTING food and have low food prices if California’s Central Valley farms weren’t shut down by the Federal government’s protection of the frigging Delta Smelt. The Endangered Species Act as applied in California is criminally stupid liberalism run amuck. Unfortunately, it’s granted little attention from our nitwit media.
In an almost endless number of ways, America is obsessed with committing suicide for the sake of political correctness and childish, outmoded do-gooderism. America needs to grow up.
Climate Science continues to ignore the lessons of history. High food prices were predicted more than 200 years ago as a consequence of the current low sunspot numbers.
Drawing analogies with variations in the brightness of stars, in 1801 the astronomer William Herschel suggested that greater sunspot activity would result in warmer earth climates. Herschel supported his hypothesis by reference to price series for wheat published in Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations. [Hufbauer, 1991.]
One consequence of this crop-freeze about which I can’t seem to find any information: Who are the affected Mexican farmers?
Are we talking about a bunch of large corporate farm operations, possessing sufficient cash buffers to make it through a season with no income? If so, even though they may survive to plant again, there’s going to be huge economic consequences in a region already teetering on the tapped-out edge. An area seeing 25%-40% unemployment can’t take much more of a hit and remain viable. Worse, (in a sociological sort of way), tax revenues are going to drop off to (0.00 + [a very little bit]), in a region whose control is being violently contested by well-financed drug cartels. Law enforcement and military power in the region already suffer from lack of resources and incredibly low pay for hazardous duty. What happens when the cartels’ bribes become the primary cashflow for the region?
Of course, the other scenario is potentially much worse. Is the affected area farmed by family-farm-sized operations? Do they have many small farms all selling in to a central gathering point? If so, the ability of those farmers to last through an entire growing season with all normal costs and no income is problematic. Look for large-scale property-ownership displacement, as the majority of those farmers lose their land, or at least lose the ability to plant another crop.
If this is the actual situation – if this freeze dispossesses thousands of small farmers – it will also wipe out hundreds of small local economies as well as entire state economies, and all this will occur in a country whose government cannot presently pay its employees, much less deliver a safety net of food if its people begin to starve. We ought to be thinking in terms of that safety net now, because even a small delay in its delivery (with the attendant mass starvation amongst a very poor, food-brittle population) is going to produce violent revolution.
If violent revolution does begin, it will turn north very quickly. Willie Sutton, when asked why he robbed banks, replied “that’s where the money is.”
North is where the food is.
The pot crop that cycles with the corn crop in that area is up in smoke too,
In North America the good stuff is mostly indoor hydro. Of course the lights increase CO2 production (coal fired plants). I have read reliable reports that CO2 enhancement is used to increase indoor production and lower the electrical cost per unit of output.
I can see the current food problems encouraging people to go to grow op stores with the cover story: “tomatoes” .
And I’m already way too off topic. BTW Instapundit linked this article:
http://pajamasmedia.com/instapundit/114929/
and:
Food – Force Majeure which also linked back here.
what towns exactly?
another cold freeze hit border areas AZ etc 1957.
what about central a m –
ericaine suppliers?