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.

This week we're going to take a look at the U.S. lime market. 

Despite the demand boost for citrus in general during the Covid-19 pandemic, so far in 2020 the world's largest lime importer has experienced the lowest prices in five years.

Those low prices have come amid some of the largest volumes in years from Mexico. In the chart below you can see the big increase in supplies over recent months. In May they reached their peak with 72m kilograms, which is up 32% year-on-year.

Mexico supplied 97% of the limes to the U.S. market.

Historical volumes (KG) of limes in the U.S. market

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

Meanwhile, prices have far lower than most previous years. In June 2020, the average price in the market was 27% lower than 2019 at US$0.48.

Historical prices (USD/KG) of limes in the U.S. market

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

In the future, the Mexican citrus sector looks like it will be affected by drought, but it seems as though limes will be the least affected, as the trees are smaller and with better irrigation systems compared to other citrus crops. 

Therefore only a 9% drop in production is expected in the coming season.

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.