The California processing strawberry crop should pick up in volume over the next seven days. The fresh market has slowed a little as the end of the Memorial Day sales wrap up. The strong market has kept growers in fresh volume and away from having to move fruit to processing channels. The first half of May has seen the smallest volume for this time of year in the past ten years for processing fruit, but the month of June is expected to be large. The year to date numbers reflect a volume that is still ahead of where we were at this same time last year. The volume that gets delivered in June should keep us ahead of last year as well. The capacity of plants to run the fruit will be the test over the next few weeks.
