Vegetables become scarce, prices rise

Availability of vegetables in Kirksville has gone down while prices have gone up.

On the night of February 3-4, the worst freeze in Mexico in more than 50 years shook the North American food industry, causing produce prices to skyrocket and quality and availability to plummet.

The freeze claimed 85 to 90 percent of "open field" crops, according to an update from Sysco, Sodexo's primary food provider. Open field crops include tomatoes, green beans, yellow squash, zucchini, cucumbers, green peppers, red peppers, eggplant, carrots and asparagus.

A freeze in Arizona at the same time also affected the availability of lettuce, romaine, spinach, broccoli and cauliflower.

Most grocery stores and food providers were not affected directly by the catastrophe until two weeks after the freeze, as they still were selling products that already had been picked.

"Starting [last] week the prices almost tripled in some products," said Dennis Markeson, director of Dining Services. "The availability of getting them and the quality is not very good."

Lora Cunningham, assistant director of Food Service, said because of product availability, price and quality, Sodexo has cut back on tomatoes and stopped using zucchini, green peppers, green beans and cucumbers. Cunningham said cucumbers are $1.10 each, but previously ranged from 69 to 89 cents.

Sodexo has removed fresh tomatoes from their menu, according to notices in campus cafeterias and the Mainstreet Market. Since then, fresh cucumbers and green peppers have disappeared. Canned tomatoes have been provided in the salad bars.

The notice reads that it might take between four and six weeks for these products to become available again. The update reported eggplant availability as "practically nonexistent" last Friday. Markeson said Sodexo likely will start using frozen peppers for cooking, but that the produce would not be available on the salad bars due to poor quality.

"Until the next crops start coming out of Florida, there's going to be a major shortage," Markeson said. Sodexo also will receive crops from California within the next two months.

Amy Conover, Walmart Zone merchandise supervisor,, said she received a "focus point" from Walmart Corporate that explained why some stores might experience difficulty in obtaining certain produce items. The message listed eggplant, cucumbers, yellow and green zucchini, green beans and green peppers as the "affected" products. Amy said prices in their Walmart region have not yet been affected.

"What Walmart tries to do is to go United States first, and then if we can't get the product through the United States, then we go outside," she said.

Conover said she did not know if Walmart had alternative sources for their produce during winter shortages.

"All we are told about where our produce comes from is that Walmart goes locally first and then merges out from there," said Walmart assistant manager Jeremy Johnson "We don't really have any specifics on where our produce comes from."

Hy-Vee Produce Manager Steve Sanders said although prices have gone up and availability has gone down, he hasn't been able to detect a major difference in product quality.

"Sometimes quality doesn't go down, just the supply goes down," Sanders said. "I thought that it would be much worse."

As of Monday, zucchini has gone from 99 cents per pound to $2.49 per pound while yellow squash is no longer available in the store. Other prices have seen a dramatic increase. However, the price of red peppers remained the same, and green beans actually decreased. Sanders said he expected prices to return to normal in four or five weeks.

Despite the increase in prices, Hy-Vee has not experienced an abnormal lack of consumers buying produce.

"It's not too far off from normal winter pricing," Sanders said. "It did go up, but a lot of people expect that in the winter on these kind of items. They are more of a summer item."