The recent rain event in California has had an impact on the California strawberry crop. Before the weekend rain event California had been picking more than 400,000 trays of fresh strawberries per day. The fresh price per box was also low due to Florida and Mexico picking larger volumes of fruit at the same time. The rain over the weekend pulled some fruit off of the fresh market and into a juice tray, but fresh market pricing has not moved up much as of today.
The rain had a larger affect on some fields and varieties than on other ones. The amount of juice stock being generated in the industry will be greater this week than in the past few weeks, but it should not be overwhelmingly large. The field price being offered to growers for juice stock has been higher of late because inventory is very low in the industry right now. Juice stock pricing is up $0.02-$0.04 per pound over last year right now because of the higher demand. More rain is forecast for this coming weekend. This could have an affect on all of this as well.
