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.

"If you don't know where you've come from, you don't know where you're going", as the famous quote goes. In this edition of 'In Charts', we would like to show how the U.S. grape market has evolved over the last 20 years in terms of origins, varieties, markets and prices.

Starting with origins, we can see that California has been the leading supplier, with a slight increase over recent years. Chile has been in number-two position and has seen a gradual decline for much of the last two decades. 

In a distant third, Mexico has seen an increase in the last three years, while Peru has recently begun to boost its presence from a low base.

There are other origins, but none of them are very relevant in the U.S. market. 

Historical volumes of grapes in the U.S., by origin. 2000-2020

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

Looking at varieties, as you can see below Flame Seedless is the queen of the market, followed by Sugraone, which became an important player after 2008. In third place is Perlette.

Historical volumes of grapes in the U.S., by variety. 2000-2020

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

As for the markets within the U.S., we can see that Kern District in California has been the receiver of the highest quantity of grapes by far, followed by Philadelphia-Camden. After these two, there are another 46 grape markets.

Historical volumes of grapes in the U.S., by market. 2000-2020

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

Finally, as you can see in the chart below, there is no variety that stands out in terms of prices. However, the ones that have fared the best over the last 20 years are Perlette, Sugraone, Black Seedless, Flame Seedless and Crimson Seedless.

Historical prices of grapes in the U.S., by variety. 2000-2020

(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.