In this ‘In Charts' series of mini-articles, Colin Fain of data visualization tool Agronometrics illustrates how the U.S. market is evolving. In each installment, he will look at a different fruit commodity, focusing on a different origin or topic to see what factors are driving change.

Today, I invite readers to dive into the world of the only vegetable we currently have in Agronometrics - asparagus. 

The two biggest players are by far Mexico and Peru. Both origins ship year-round, with their major peaks in production offsetting each other to offers a relatively stable supply to consumers. Mexico's production during the first trimester of the year is the notable exception, which I explore in this article.

Asparagus Movements last 18 Months

(Source: USDA Market News via Agronometrics)

[Agronometrics users can view this chart with live updates here]

The market is characterized by volatility, with considerable price swings seemingly every other month. Interestingly, Mexico seems to be the most volatile of the two big players in the asparagus market, dancing around Peru as it hits nearly all the spikes and troughs along the way.

Asparagus Prices by Origin

(Source: USDA Market News via Agronometrics)

[Agronometrics users can view this chart with live updates here]

To make more sense of this information and to more easily spot long-term trends, I would like to introduce our brand new tool with which to aggregate yearly volumes. In the chart below we can appreciate the massive growth the category has seen, breaking records year after year, more than doubling their production in the last nine years. What is even more impressive is that pricing has actually been doing a decent job at keeping up with the volumes, hitting a couple of bumps along the way, but in the face of tremendous growth we even saw an increase of $0.24 per kilo last year compared to the previous year - an impressive achievement considering the on the 148M KG that were sent from Mexico to the U.S.

Average yearly prices and volumes of Asparagus from Mexico

(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 23 fruits we currently track.