SINALOA, MX - It is looking like a strong start for the Mexico winter veg season, with fortuitous early rains having helped to ensure quality and quantity as harvest gets underway.
“So far, the season has been great for Sinaloa growers. Buyers can expect excellent production with high-quality produce grown under the highest food safety and social responsibility standards,” Georgius Gotsis, Chief Executive Officer for Veggies From Mexico (VFM), recently shared with me. “Right now, prices for peppers are around 30 percent higher compared to last year, plum tomatoes are 18 percent higher, and cucumbers are 20 percent higher year over year.”
Growers began harvesting cucumbers and eggplants in the region over the last two to three weeks, with VFM just beginning pepper exports this past week. The first tomato exports of the season, Georgius said, should be coming out of Sinaloa by mid-December.
“We are still on time for successful buyer and retailer programs for the season,” he explained. “We have had a great start weather-wise. Fortunately, we had heavy rains in the summer in Sinaloa and water is fully available at the dams for the season. So far, the acreage of most crops remains stable.”
While Georgius predicted that we can expect good market volume and quality to meet demand through the first weeks of January, he forecasted they would not be as high price-wise at the turn of the new year as we are seeing currently.
Any buyers in need of more info will have easier and more interactive access than ever. VFM has just launched a new website, showing a faster catalog of fresh products and a more practical way to contact growers of the VFM community.
“We have strengthened our VFM community over the past two years not only by stepping up weekly audits of commercial food safety and social responsibility certificate criteria, but also with a robust community campaign in different media and industry events. Buyers from all over North America are looking for us, we want them to find us simply and effectively,” Georgius commented in a release on the new site.
Sinaloa will be in full swing come January, with high-quality tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, eggplant, green beans, hard squash, and zucchini among other veggies.
