Louisiana strawberry farmers are cautiously optimistic about a good upcoming strawberry season.
William Fletcher of Fletcher Strawberry Farm based in Ponchatoula, LA says a mild winter brings about a positive outlook for the season, which runs approximately mid-March to mid-May. “We are currently enjoying some pretty good weather. Everyone has their cover off at this point and there’s nothing in the long-range forecast that would make me think I’d need to put it back on,” says Fletcher. In Southern Louisiana, the last frost date is approximately St. Patrick’s Day.
Good local demand
The crop of strawberries will meet strong, local demand though Fletcher Strawberry Farm does distribute as far as Southern Mississippi as well as throughout Louisiana. “We’re starting to get a lot of calls from people anticipating the onset of the crop,” says Fletcher, adding that the growing tends to be within the Livingston and Tangipahoa parishes. “The Louisiana strawberry industry is very small compared to other states such as California and Florida. In the 80s, a lot of farmers got out of it because they were having trouble finding places to market them. But our industry is small enough now that the majority of strawberries grown in Louisiana are sold right here.”
Indeed, the Louisiana strawberry industry is a small, but mighty, one. “In my 23 years of being a strawberry farmer here, I’ve seen the number of acres every year go down. I don’t think that there’s ever going to be any trend that it comes back unless it’s a farmer who already has the land and puts it into production,” Fletcher says. “A lot of the farmers have aged out since I started and no one in their families have taken it on. And those who are in it, a lot of them have scaled back to something that is more manageable.”
For more information:
William Fletcher
Fletcher Farms
Tel: (985) 507-1840
[email protected]
www.fletcherstrawberryfarm.com