In this installment of the ‘Agronometrics In Charts’ series, Cristian Crespo F. 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.

In week 13, blackberries reached the highest average prices (USD/kg) of the last five years in the U.S. market.

As can be seen in the graph below, prices reached a historic $10.17/kg, which is 74 percent higher than those recorded in 2020 for the same date.

Historical blackberry prices | Conventional (USD/KG)

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

Looking at the graph below, these high prices are of blackberries from Central America, whose average prices in week 13 have been $11.03/kg for conventional blackberries, and those from Mexico, which reached a maximum of $9.31/kg for non-organic blackberries.

Blackberry prices by origin | Conventional (USD/KG)

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

In relation to volumes, as we can see from the graph below, they were lower in 2021 from week 7 in comparison to 2020. In week 12, the volumes of blackberries registered in the U.S. market were over 1,500,000 kg, an 18 percent decrease than those recorded in 2020 for the same date range.

Volume of blackberries (KG)*

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

*Blackberry volumes for week 13 are not yet updated by USDA.

The volumes that decreased the most were from Mexico, because the blackberry production of Michoacán, the main producing state in the country, fell by 29 percent as shown in the following graph.

On the other hand, volumes from Guatemala were higher between weeks three and 12 of 2021, compared to 2020 for the same dates. This decrease in Mexican blackberry volumes may have pushed prices down.

Historical volumes (KG) of Mexican blackberries | Conventional

(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.