In this installment of the ‘Agronometrics In Charts’ series, Colin Fain 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.
The Mexican table grape season serves a special niche right between Chile and California’s seasons. As the first trickles began appearing on shelves, there were wide-ranging concerns as well as excitement about the stability of the market and possible price spikes after a late-season freeze in Chile, it seems like those fears were unfounded.
Chile’s volumes have comfortably surpassed last year and, hoping to take advantage of the higher pricing, it seems like a larger percentage of fruit has been sent to the spot market, slashing prices over the last couple of weeks. It’s easy to make these observations after the fact, but maybe John Pandol was onto something when he wrote about this situation at the beginning of March.
Grape volumes (KG) by origin | Conventional
So it seems like the fortunes of Mexican producers will not be made based on the wild pricing the industry was expecting a month ago and exporters will have to continue relying on long-term trends and savvy business plans for success.
With a longer-term view in mind, we can dive into the data reported by the USDA for Mexico's production, where one trend stands out above the rest - the persistent growth of the white seedless variety.
Over the last nine years, this variety has gone from 830,000 million kilograms in 2012 to the second-largest variety imported from Mexico 41.18 million kilograms in 2020, just behind Flame Seedless.
Grape volumes (KG) by variety (white seedless highlighted) | Conventional
There are several reasons that have no doubt contributed to the success of this variety. The consumers' experience with the fruit, the sweetness, crunchiness, etc., but part of the story can be attributed to the production window that white seedless grapes enjoy.
In 2012, the window went from June to July and in 2020 has been expanded to range from April through August with its peak at the beginning of July.
Grape volumes (KG) by variety (white seedless highlighted) | Conventional
This engineering of the production window allows white seedless to take advantage of some of the best pricing available, as Mexico’s fruit tries to fill the production gap left at the end of Chile’s season, typically offering better pricing than the rest of the season.
Grape prices by variety | Conventional from Mexico | USD/18 lb Containers Bagged
Looking forward to the 2021 season, it appears that the production coming out of Sonora is expected to be slightly lower than last year, however, the largest category will be white seedless with 44 percent of production. A testament to finding the right product at the right time in the right market.
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.
