High Temps Mean Low Veggie Prices

By Susan Salisbury, The Palm Beach Post, Fla.

Jan. 4–Think of it as a late Christmas gift.

Area growers and grocers say the region’s recent run of high temperatures has brought lower vegetable prices at the supermarket.

The unseasonably warm weather is causing Florida’s winter vegetable crop to grow and ripen quickly, they say. That’s creating a supply glut and low prices for bell peppers, tomatoes and other winter produce. Prices for the popular green bell peppers are dropping as much as 30 percent overnight at some stores.

Good news for consumers. Bad news for growers.

“We have not had any cool weather to slow this stuff down,” said Cary Braswell, who handles sales at DuBois & Son LLC, a pepper grower west of Boynton Beach. “It is very unusual this time of year to have this kind of heat.” December, with an average temperature of 73.1 degrees at Palm Beach International Airport, was 4.8 degrees above normal and the second-warmest December in history for Palm Beach County, said Dan Gregoria, meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Miami.

“January is continuing the exact same trend,” Gregoria said, adding that Tuesday’s 75-degree temperature was 8 degrees above average The same goes for Stuart, Fort Pierce and Vero Beach, where December temperatures were approximately five to seven degrees above normal, said Jackie Cartwright, a National Weather Service meteorologist technician in Melbourne.

The warm weather and resulting flooded market are bad news for growers, who are receiving $8 for a box of 42 to 45 jumbo green bell peppers.

Retail prices are as low as 99 cents a pound today for green bell peppers at local Winn-Dixie and Publix supermarkets, down from $1.59 earlier this week. Plum tomatoes are selling as cheaply as 79 cents a pound, and Florida round tomatoes at 99 cents a pound.

Publix spokeswoman Anne Hendricks said large supplies of Florida-grown tomatoes, green bell peppers and strawberries are all coming into the stores early due to the warm weather, and savings are being passed on to customers.

“While that might be unfortunate for the growers, it’s a boon for the customers,” Hendricks said. “With tomatoes and green peppers at 99 cents pound, people seem to go crazy over it.” Reggie Brown, manager of the Maitland-based Florida Tomato Committee, said it’s the first normal crop after two years of hurricanes. When production was down following the hurricanes of 2004 and 2005, retail tomato prices rose as high as $3 to $4 a pound, and demand is now depressed, Brown said. “We are trying to push a normal crop through a market that has been constricted by high prices over the last two years,” he said.

Fort Piece-based tomato grower David Neill of Triangle Farms said the $7 he’s getting for 25 pounds of tomatoes is below break-even, especially with fuel and other costs having risen in the last two years.

Neill, who has fields in Martin, St. Lucie, Palm Beach, Broward and Collier counties, needs $9 to $12 a box to cover his costs.

The warm weather means growers can’t pace the harvest as they had expected to do.

“This unseasonable warmth does bring the tomatoes on quicker than if you have some cooler nights,” Neill said. “You can’t hold them in the field as long … you’ve got to pick it.”

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