{"id":43789,"date":"2024-04-04T23:09:05","date_gmt":"2024-04-05T03:09:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/?p=43789"},"modified":"2024-04-04T23:09:10","modified_gmt":"2024-04-05T03:09:10","slug":"too-many-berries-florida-grower-discusses-early-end-to-season-amid-low-market-prices","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/2024\/04\/04\/too-many-berries-florida-grower-discusses-early-end-to-season-amid-low-market-prices\/","title":{"rendered":"Too Many Berries: Florida Grower Discusses Early End to Season Amid Low Market Prices"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Supply overwhelmed demand in the strawberry industry in March. As a result, the subsequent market did not respond favorably to Florida growers.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Matt Parke, farm manager of Parkesdale Farms in Plant City, Florida, stopped harvesting his crop on March 17, because he was going to lose more money harvesting the crop than if he had just stopped.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe market was horrible. Everything just ran together between us, and California pushed hard, and Baja pushed hard. It was a lot of berries at once. Between everybody I imagine it was close to two million boxes a day,\u201d Parke said. \u201cThe USDA was reporting (prices at) $6 to $8 (per box), but it was more along the lines of $3 or price after sale. There was good business on the retail side, but anything that wasn\u2019t sold in retail was going to the open market. The open market was so saturated, they were just like, \u2018Please take them.\u2019 You were lucky if you got $3 back.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What was more discouraging was how much crop Parke had left in the field.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI had 1,000 flats to the acre, probably,\u201d he said. \u201cI hadn\u2019t had to stop this early in seven years, besides the COVID year when they shut us off right when the pandemic happened. Other than that, we hadn\u2019t had to stop early in a long time.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Weather impacted Florida strawberry production. Cooler temperatures combined with excessive rains slowed the crop considerably. It led to too much supply at the wrong time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe weather we had pushed our berries back to coincide with California. California came early this year, and we came late. It was just a catastrophe,\u201d Parke said. \u201cWe would have had a better go at it if we were a little bit earlier.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Supply overwhelmed demand in the strawberry industry in March. As a result, the subsequent market did not respond favorably to Florida growers. Matt Parke, farm manager of Parkesdale Farms in… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":43790,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"0","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","inline_featured_image":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"dois","default_image_id":71799,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[14],"tags":[8051],"class_list":["post-43789","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-too-many-berries-florida-grower-discusses-early-end-to-season-amid-low-market-prices"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43789","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43789"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43789\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/43790"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43789"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43789"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43789"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}