Lettuce supplies look to be steady right now out of California. “As far as romaine is concerned, it’s pretty readily available right now,” says Wayde Nichols of Buy Fresh Produce Inc. He says that pricing on romaine lettuce is also at a normal price, about $10-$12 a case, and that should stay consistent throughout the next few months as long as no oddities occur.
Green leaf lettuce looks to be in the same situation with steady supplies at approximately the same price and the same level of availability. Both green leaf lettuce and romaine are coming out of the Salinas, California, region.
As for Buy Fresh Produce Inc., it is a produce processing plant producing salad kits for major retailers all West of the Rockies. It uses primarily romaine and green leaf lettuce in its finished wholesale and retail finished salad products. “So the demand is always there,” says Nichols. “However, when you’re seeing pricing at a normal price, and the quality of the product is good, that means there are no anomalies like floods or bugs or what have you.”
2022 challenges
That would include the aberration that 2022 saw in Salinas with the Impatiens Necrotic Spot Virus (INSV), which had been extremely aggressive in large swaths of the region. Nichols says he hasn’t heard any concerns about that this season nor about weather events such as Hurricane Hilary. “That just brought us rain, though we had bigger rain storms throughout the winter than what that produced,” he says.
Looking ahead, supplies of romaine and green leaf lettuce will continue to come out of Salinas until November-December, after which supplies will then transition to Yuma, Arizona, El Centro, and the Imperial Valley. “In those transitions, that will affect product availability because it will take a while to set up down there and get everything moving in the right direction,” adds Nichols.
For more information:
Wayde Nichols
Buy Fresh Produce Inc.
Tel.: +1 ((323) 796-0127
[email protected]
https://buyfreshproduceinc.com/product/