Agronometrics in Charts: El Niño sets up volatile winter for California strawberries

Each week, the series ‘Agronometrics In Charts’ examines a different horticultural commodity, focusing on a specific origin or topic and visualizing the trade market factors driving change. Check out our entire archive.

California strawberry growers are bracing for an El Niño winter, and the sector may be the first to feel it. David Holden of Ventura County-based Holden Research & Consulting told Fresh Plaza that El Niño is already pulling southern moisture north.

He points to unusually warm Pacific waters and tides running about a foot above normal. He sees December through February as the critical window, and strawberries are among the crops most exposed to an excessively wet winter.

The weekend of October 31–November 1 offered an early preview. Steve Johnston of G.W. Palmer & Co. told the outlet that Oxnard recorded more than an inch of rain and Santa Maria over a third of an inch. Salinas-Watsonville saw less than a tenth of an inch because the storm moved up from the south. Harvest is paused until fields dry out, and growers are watching closely for quality damage.

The timing is difficult. Supply was already tight, and little relief is expected until central Mexico ramps up shipments after Thanksgiving.

"It will be almost a month of high prices with light supply," Johnston said.

He puts the market between $26 and $30 and expects it to hold there through November.

The warm ocean conditions behind El Niño have shaped the season from the start. Water temperatures are around 65 degrees Fahrenheit in Monterey Bay and in the upper 70s degrees Fahrenheit further south. In Salinas-Watsonville, an unusually warm March triggered an early start and an early finish, along with added insect pressure.

The outlook extends well beyond the California strawberry season. A wetter-than-normal season is expected across Baja, central Mexico, and Florida, the other key sources of winter supply, raising the risk of disruptions overlapping across origins. Where the heaviest rain will fall remains uncertain. For buyers, that points to a winter where strawberry supply and pricing could swing sharply from week to week, depending on where each storm lands.

Source: USDA Market News via Agronometrics.

Source: USDA Market News via Agronometrics.

Source: USDA Market News via Agronometrics.

*Graph courtesy of Agronometrics | Top photo by Dare Artworks via Unsplash

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