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| Uh, kinda of small for .89 cents! |
Forsyth MO – It's mid July
2016 and while I was visiting a local grocery store in Forsyth
Missouri I had listed bell peppers on my shopping list as an item to
purchase. I wanted to prepare a stuffed bell pepper recipe that I
also thought would be fun to post that on one of my blogs!
It being mid summer and all, I figured
that about a a lot of fresh produce would be hitting seasonal lows at
my area stores. Unfortunately, that was not the case with the
peppers. The green peppers I saw on that date were really minuscule
and were selling for .89 cents each! Whoa! I thought. Was this
another example of the California drought disaster? A quick
inquiry on the all knowing internet did not yield me any good clues.
As a matter of fact, a review of past pepper purchases I made over
the last year showed that prices, if anything, had averaged higher in
price per green pepper! Even back in 2009, I saw records that
indicated I had paid .69 cents for one! WTF? I wondered. More
research was needed here, for sure!
One thing appeared certain and that was
that prices could be affected by weather related problems in the
regions where they are grown as well as by the price of gasoline.
Still, I felt like I needed to investigate a little further. Bad
weather in some parts of the northern hemisphere were certainly a
factor, as I discovered in this article in The
Packer. Commodities availability for bell peppers was cited as
'fairly low' with poor harvests cited as one reason. See the most
recent reports here.
A two days later, I ventured back to
the same store to see if I could snag the Produce Mgr and perhaps
gain some additional insights from him. Lucky for me, I did run into
the manager and he informed me that the wholesaler that they buy from
got a bee in his bonnet to buy from locally grown sources. oh oh, I thought. The thing
is, the peppers grown in Missouri and Arkansas don't even hold a candle to
those that arrive from Texas and Mexico... yet we pay the same prices
for what amounts to an inferior product! So, I plan to avoid buying
any more of these guys until the fall when our southern supplies will
once again flow!
I live in Nashville and I work throughout Tennessee and Kentucky.
ReplyDeleteAll I see growing is soybeans and corn.
Just about all these products are being sold to Asian countries.
These rich farmers don't give a damn if you have to pay .89 for a tennis ball size pepper or .60 for a 5 inch cucumber.
I avoid the produce this time of the summer to keep my B/P in line.