The west coast is flush with tomatoes. “Overall we’re pretty saturated with tomatoes at the moment,” says Len Krahn of Aldergrove, BC-based SunSelect Produce Inc. “All of the main greenhouses are pounding away and the fields are starting to show some product. And Mexico is still, not necessarily putting TOVs (tomatoes on the vine) but round and roma tomatoes available on the market. This time of year it’s pretty typical for July/August to be inundated in product.”
Krahn believes the market has approximately the same amount of TOVs as last year around this time with several regions in TOV production right now including California and Leamington, Ont. as well as greenhouse production. “It’s tomato saturation time,” Krahn adds.
Late start
This despite the fact that the season kicked off somewhat late. “Western Canada was late because we had 20 per cent less light from weeks 5-12 than seasonal average,” he says. “And in California, we experienced exactly the same thing with light which slowed all the crops down and postponed some of the regular flushes by 3-4 weeks.”
That said, week to week movement is good Krahn adds. “We’re sold out at the moment,” he says. “It’s just you get a little bit plugged up on the holidays because they pull really heavy before the holidays and then they go on holiday and then the next week they move through that inventory so typically you get the slowdowns around the holidays and you’ll get some inventory building.”
Prices in the meantime are at a seasonal average.
Holding until September
Looking ahead, Krahn expects more of the same for the next few weeks and it’ll typically continue so until September 10th. “Then as you get into the later part of September, the BC volume drops off a little bit and the field quality can go down,” he says. “But again, it all depends on any weather events that come. Our pricing will start to rise in October.”
