For about three weeks, western grower-shippers were basking in the limelight of very good prices, including a $50 lettuce market for a time. Then a new recall, misleading news stories, high retail prices and the end of the Christmas pull led to a precipitous drop this week.

“We haven’t seen a market drop like that in years,” said Denny Donovan, sales manager for Fresh Kist Produce LLC in Santa Maria, CA. “Lettuce went from $50 to $10 overnight and cauliflower went from $30 to $7.”

A quick look at the Market News report on Thursday, Dec. 20, revealed low prices across the board. Donovan said it wasn’t difficult to predict that the very high prices were not sustainable. But he said the very quick drop was a surprise. As far as cauliflower is concerned, he said misleading news stories advising consumers to avoid all cauliflower from California was very damaging. The voluntary recall was targeted and confined to one farm but Donovan said the news stories falsely painted a picture of a more widespread concern.

For its part, Adam Bros. Farming Inc. in Santa Maria, CA -- the site of the recall -- issued its own press release trying to limit the damage. It relayed that the Food & Drug Administration had updated its own website noting that the agency had no concern about Adam Bros. product that did not come into contact with the suspect reservoir that tested positive in early December for the E. coli pathogen. “We hope that the FDA’s statement will restore the produce industry’s confidence and trust in Adam Bros. as a six-generation, vertically-integrated family farm in Santa Maria Valley,” said co-owner Peter Adam.

Speaking to The Produce News on Dec. 20, Donovan of Fresh Kist said orders for all vegetables would be light through the next seven to 10 days because of the holiday and the short Christmas week. He added that Fresh Kist is leaving a lot of cauliflower in the field because there is no market for it. “In the next two days, we could be cutting 25,000 (cartons) but we will only be doing 5,000-10,000.”

Donovan did say the underlying factors leading to the across-the-board hot market in early December are still in play. Most notably, vegetable acreage is down.

Jason Lathos, manager of commodities for Church Bros. LLC in Salinas, CA, agreed that just as the sky-high markets weren’t going to last forever, neither will the rock-bottom prices. “There is a lot of potential for volatile markets throughout January,” he said on Dec. 20.

He said the industry tends to follow the same cycle year-in and year-out of under-planting and then over-planting. Growers in the desert areas of California and Arizona were hammered in the 2017-18 season so it was very predictable that less product would be planted for the 2018-19 season. Those decreased supplies combined with yield-decreasing cold weather at the front end of the deal to create the strong December market.

“The No. 1 factor in the desert is always weather,” he said, with good weather creating great yields and low markets, and bad weather having the opposite effect on both fronts. As he talked to The Produce News on the Thursday before Christmas, Lathos said cold weather was predicted again for Christmas week. He expects lower yields will result and the price will climb.

He also said labor could play a bigger role than usual this season. The Yuma harvest occurs near the U.S.-Mexico border. For years, many workers, legally documented, line up every morning and cross the border into the United States as part of their normal work day. “It typically takes an hour or two to get across the border. I’m hearing that it is now taking up to six hours to cross because of all the security. Workers are lining up at 2-3 a.m. just to get in a day’s work.”

Lathos continued that cold weather with ice in the fields can shorten the workday to a four hour shift. He questioned how many workers are going to line up for six hours just to work for four. “It has already been a factor and it could get worse,” he said.

The bottom line is just as the early December markets didn’t predict the low prices later in the month, neither do those low prices portend to a continuation of the same in January.