In this installment of the ‘Agronometrics In Charts’ series, Sarah Ilyas studies the state of the Mexican mango season. 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.

Mexico is one of the premier producers of mangoes. Michoacan, Nayarit, Sinaloa, Oaxaca, Chiapas and Jalisco are Mexico’s most prominent mango growing and exporting states. 

The most widely grown varieties in Mexico are the Ataulfo, a small, flat, green-to-yellow mango with a point called a beak at one end; the criollo or petacon, a large, sweet, round, reddish-orange version of the fruit; the Tommy Atkins and the Kent, very large, highly perfumed fruit, sometimes growing nearly to the size of small melons. 

The Association of Mango Exporters of Mexico have forecast an excellent season with about 61 million cartons of mangos going to the U.S market in 2022. That would represent about a 5 percent increase over last year’s volume of 58 million cartons. 

The group is anticipating an extended peak shipping period. Good volume shipments will continue from Mexico through much of the summer. Typically, Mexico starts to run out of fruit in late September.

EMEX estimated that producers from Michoacan will top the charts of U.S. mango exports with more than 14 million cartons this season, followed closely by Nayarit’s close to 13 million cartons and Sinaloa, which could approach 12 million cartons. 

Oaxaca is next with more than 10 million cartons, but then there is a bit of a drop-off. The state of Chiapas, which is one of the earliest producing regions, should check in with close to 5 million cartons, while Jalisco in Central Mexico chips in with about 4.5 million cartons. 

Guerrero (2 million) and Colima (1.2 million) are two other states with significant exports to the United States.

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

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

Despite it being the end of the season in Michoacán, a time when quality can affect supplies, the quality has remained solid. Pricing, not surprisingly, has been stronger on larger fruit. 

It’s been around $5.50-$6.50 for large fruit. On 10s, pricing has been around $3.50-$4 and $3.50-$3.75 on 12s and has stayed fairly steady. 

Mangos tend to have a self-regulating ceiling. If the variety is right and the size is very large, a retailer can get as much as $1.99 for a conventional piece of fruit, but sales are definitely impacted when the price for a single mango moves above $1. 

Often retailers promote the crop at a price point of multiples for $1, such as two for a dollar or three for a dollar. When f.o.b. price climbs into double-digits, demand typically declines and the price starts moving down.

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.

All pricing for domestic US produce represents the spot market at Shipping Point (i.e. packing house/climate controlled warehouse, etc.). For imported fruit, the pricing data represents the spot market at Port of Entry.

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 21 commodities we currently track.