In this installment of the ‘In Charts' series, Cristian Crespo of Agronometrics illustrates how the U.S. market is evolving. Each week the series looks at a different horticultural commodity, focusing on a specific origin or topic visualizing the market factors that are driving change.

This week we're going to take a look at the unusual dynamics in the U.S. asparagus market over the last few weeks amid the Covid-19 pandemic.

While prices in the U.S. market are currently declining, they have been substantially higher than previous years over the last few weeks. In week 19, the average was US$5.36 per kilo, which is 22% up on last year.

The high prices  - coming on the back of very low prices - are likely related to a sharp drop in available supplies.

Historical prices of asparagus (USD/KG) in the U.S. market

(Source: USDA Market News via Agronometrics. Agronometrics users can view this chart with live updates here)

Asparagus volumes

In line with the high prices are the lowest of the last few years, coming mainly due to a drop in volumes coming from Peru.

Volumes of asparagus in the U.S. market

(Source: USDA Market News via Agronometrics. Agronometrics users can view this chart with live updates here)

As can be seen in the chart below, volumes from Peru have been well below previous years. In April this year, only 331,128 kilos of Peruvian asparagus arrived in the market, far below the 4.8m kilos in the same period last year.

The cause of this decline, according to Peru's exporters' association ADEX, was the situation with Covid-19. The organization said that asparagus exports fell by 16.6% in the first quarter of the year.

Volumes of asparagus from Peru in the U.S. market

(Source: USDA Market News via Agronometrics. Agronometrics users can view this chart with live updates here)

In our ‘In Charts’ series, we work to tell some of the stories that are moving the industry. Feel free to take a look at the other articles by clicking here.

You can keep track of the markets daily through Agronometrics, a data visualization tool built to help the industry make sense of the huge amounts of data that professionals need to access to make informed decisions. If you found the information and the charts from this article useful, feel free to visit us at www.agronometrics.com where you can easily access these same graphs, or explore the other 20 fruits we currently track.