topic Re: What is going on with limes? in Kitchen

What is going on with limes?

depglass — Sun, 27 Apr 2014 00:18:08 GMT

My market had a sign that said Limes 2.39 each. Huh? Come to think of it, someone on TV was talking about lemon juice in their guacamole. Is there a lime blight or what?

Re: What is going on with limes?

jackthebear — Sun, 27 Apr 2014 01:02:52 GMT

yes there is some kind of disease attacking them as well as some other stuff

I am not going to link it but one can easily find the info. too bad I love me some guac

Re: What is going on with limes?

divine — Sun, 27 Apr 2014 01:15:35 GMT

In Mexico the lime harvest was bad this year so prices have skyrocketed.

Re: What is going on with limes?

terrier3 — Sun, 27 Apr 2014 01:25:39 GMT

Oh no!

I'm having a party in a few weeks and I'm going to make Key Lime Pie punch (vanilla vodka, coconut rum, lots of fresh lime juice and a dash of pineapple juice.)

Re: What is going on with limes?

StylishLady — Sun, 27 Apr 2014 01:31:06 GMT

Strange. Last year our cocktail tree yielded its first Persian limes (3) and they were great. Made some limeade and a lime pie. This spring several blossoms grew and fruit began to develop, but they all dropped. So far no sign of limes. The rest of the tree has Meyer lemons, navel oranges, ruby red grapefruit, and honeybell tangelos growing nd holding on. Our Lisbon lemon tree is producing fruit and the new Mandarin orange tree has several fruit on it. Odd that only the Persian limes were affected.

Re: What is going on with limes?

TootyJane — Sun, 27 Apr 2014 01:44:23 GMT

First there was the drought, followed by a bacterial disease (huanglongbing) that attacks citrus trees, and then the harsh winter that killed the tree blossoms. BTW, the U.S. receives 95 percent of its lime supply from Mexico.

Re: What is going on with limes?

FunkyHulaGirl — Sun, 27 Apr 2014 01:52:19 GMT

Aldi has a bag of them (4-5) for $1.99.

Re: What is going on with limes?

karlam — Sun, 27 Apr 2014 01:57:42 GMT

My grocery store was selling them for 89 cents each. I got a 5 lb. bag at Costco for $9.00.

Re: What is going on with limes?

LilyBell2 — Sun, 27 Apr 2014 02:01:09 GMT

I think I'll go outside and hug my lime tree... it's loaded with fruit, and so is my lemon tree. I feel very fortunate.

Re: What is going on with limes?

FunkyHulaGirl — Sun, 27 Apr 2014 02:12:08 GMT

Fresh produce prices skyrocketing in 2014

Friday, April 25, 2014 by: J. D. Heyes
Tags: fresh produce, consumer prices, skyrocketing costs

(NaturalNews) The embattled American consumer can't seem to catch a break. Gas prices remain high, electric rates are rising, clothing is becoming more expensive, school debt is piling up, taxes are climbing, healthcare costs have not come down and food prices -- wow. Everything that costs money is rising, while wages remain flat or depressed. Does anybody in Washington get it?

Grocery prices, especially produce, are hitting new highs, and what's worse is that we shouldn't expect them to fall anytime soon, thanks to a number of factors (including a few I just hit on).

As noted by The Wall Street Journal (WSJ):

The cost of fresh produce is poised to jump in the coming months as a three-year drought in California shows few signs of abating, according to an Arizona State University study set to be released....

The study found a head of lettuce could increase in price as much as 62 cents to $2.44; avocado prices could rise 35 cents to $1.60 each; and tomatoes could cost 45 cents more at $2.84 per pound. (The run-up in produce prices is in line with other projections showing that overall food cost gains are expected to accelerate this year.)

Costs have been rising already, but drought is making them worse

These latest projections were compiled by Timothy Richards, an agribusiness professor at the university's W. P. Carey School of Business, WSJ reported. He examined the effect of the California drought on farmland, as well as consumer pricing trends, to determine the eight fresh fruits and veggies most likely to experience the largest price increases this summer.

Indeed, prices may already be on the rise. According the Labor Department's consumer-price index, which measures such data, food prices rose 0.5 percent for the second straight month in March, making it the largest two-month gain in the food-at-home category since 2011.

Individually, food and vegetable costs rose 0.9 percent in March, following a 1.1 percent gain the month before. Meanwhile, the price of meat and dairy products is also rising. Still, overall consumer prices only inched up 0.2 percent in March, but that reflected the fact that wider inflation throughout the economy remains subdued.

Nevertheless, just because prices aren't rising as fast on other goods doesn't mean that consumers won't feel the rise in food costs, since everybody's got to eat (as opposed to, say, purchase a new washer and dryer or automobile).

The problem lies in large part with the drought in California; the state produces the most of each of the products Richards identified in his analysis. In the case of avocados, for instance, California is the only state with any significant crop.

The rainless state of being in California has wiped out between 10 and 20 percent of crops for the eight items, but the amount of expected price increases tends to vary widely, WSJ reported. Lettuce prices could possibly rise by as much as 34 percent, and avocado prices by as much as 28 percent, making them the largest potential increases.

"People are the least price-sensitive when it comes to those items, and they're willing to pay what it takes to get them," Richards said. "It's hard to make a salad without lettuce."

True, but it's harder still to pay for salad when prices for its primary ingredients continue to rise.

'We could be seeing California pass as the nation's bread basket'

More from WSJ:

In basic economic terms, the drought reduces supply, which puts upward pressure on prices. But how high the price can rise is determined by consumers' willingness to pay more against their ability to find a substitute.

Packaged salads, for example, would increase in price by only 13%, even though many of the ingredients in them are projected to increase in cost by a greater percentage. That's because consumers view premade salads as a "luxury" good and would readily switch to lower-cost alternative if the price gets too high, Mr. Richards said. They could chop the lettuce themselves or buy frozen vegetables.

The impact of the drought in California, and the overall escalation of food prices, could actually extend beyond produce aisles to deli counters and to individual products like salsa, because they all use the hardest-hit produce.

One positive bit of news: the threat of competition from farmers outside of California, as well as foreign produce suppliers, will be incentivized to ship more crops throughout the U.S., which will put downward pressure on the market and could serve to curb drastic price increases.

Water supply problems in California, however, are expected to persist for years to come, leaving the state's farmers with some hard choices to make, Richards says. They will have to figure out which crops to give the limited amount of water to and which ones to let fall away.

"We could be looking at future where California is no longer bread basket for the country," he added.

Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/044869_fresh_produce_consumer_prices_skyrocketing_costs.html#ixzz302pmeV7V

Re: What is going on with limes?

voyager1980 — Sun, 27 Apr 2014 03:07:25 GMT

Even quacks consider "Natural News" a quack website. Lol

NaturalNews.com (formerly Newstarget) is an anti-science conspiracy website founded by Mike "the Health Ranger" Adams. The site promotes almost every sort of medical woo known to human history, though it specializes in vaccine denialism,[1] AIDS/HIV denial,[2] quack cancer medicine[3] and conspiracy theories about modern medicine.[4] Even otherquacks think it's a quack site.[5] The site has recently broadened to includeextreme environmentalism and conspiracy theorizing about (the president) and gun control.

If you cite NaturalNews on any matter whatsoever, you are almost certainly wrong."

Re: What is going on with limes?

voyager1980 — Sun, 27 Apr 2014 03:08:58 GMT

""Top 10 Worst Anti-Science Websites (cited research references backing up this list): The winner as number 1 worst? NaturalNews.com.""

http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4283

Re: What is going on with limes?

sunshine45 — Sun, 27 Apr 2014 03:12:10 GMT

69 cents each the other day at the fresh market.....bought 10 of them the other day. we use a lot of limes.

as it gets closer to november, my s/o has a lime tree that produces A LOT of great juicy limes. i get those and hoard them. they get squeezed and kept in bottles in the refrigerator and some of juice gets frozen. when i am not there he sends them to me in one of the flat rate boxes via usps.

Re: What is going on with limes?

skuggles — Sun, 27 Apr 2014 03:42:10 GMT

""the shortage is expected to be short lived."" from Medical Daily Good harvest in May

Re: What is going on with limes?

shoekitty — Mon, 28 Apr 2014 05:57:27 GMT

I live in California in the Santa Clara Valley, which used to produce most of the worlds fruit. Most of the farms and ranches have been sold off. If you ask the landowners, the reason is, their kids don't want to farm anymore. With price of land, and developers chomping at the bit to build, the land has been sold for homes. I live in a City that produced most of the garlic in the country. I know the landowners. They said they worked to send their kids to college (babyboomers), the kids got jobs outside farming. Much of the land here held in family trusts, and by surviving family since late 1800's. It is just being parceled and sold for outlets and homes. You can hardly find strawberry farms anymore. Homes run in the mid 600,000 and up (average 825,000). You can get 7.5 regular lot homes on an acre. You can get 11 townhomes to an acre. After the agricultural parents die, they hang on for a while. They lease the land out, but the taxes are high. They get tired of it since they often have moved out of town, and cave and sell. The cities make more money from taxes on the homes than they do non working farms and ranches. This is just one side of the coin. JMHO. But many are changing the way they have always farmed. In a town near us once known for it's apples, they have cut almost all the apple trees down, as they aged. They have the replaced the apple trees with berries, like blackberry, raspberry and ollie berry. They had huge apple juice plants, like Motts, Mann's and such. Just a couple apple farms left there. Some opened organic farms on the old apple orchards and are trying new products like kale and chards, that is more dependable and easier to grow

The pioneer Woman said she was using regular limes in her key lime dessert, because she couldn't find key limes anywhere. Then someone mentioned a business in Florida that sells Key lime pie frozen, has to use a mixture of regular and Key Limes, as they cannot get enough of the real product

Re: What is going on with limes?

sunshine45 — Mon, 28 Apr 2014 06:07:36 GMT

for anyone looking for some GOOD key lime juice to replace key limes, you may want to try a bottle of NELLIE AND JOE's key west lime juice. i have used it before in drinks and in recipes and it is excellent.

Re: What is going on with limes?

tkins — Thu, 01 May 2014 21:50:17 GMT

Here is some information from one of our local news reports yesterday (April 30, 2014) that should answer your question and offers some hope with regards to supply and price.

"A lot of this is from the weather back in January and February when the storms blew the blossoms off of the lime plants in Mexico where the majority of the limes we get come from," says Chris Mills. But now there are a lot of other unexpected countries contributing limes like Ecuador so it's easing the crunch and we expect the prices to come down pretty close to normal by the end of May." Not quite in time for Cinco de Mayo but in time for summer.

Makes me miss our 9 dwarf citrus trees that we had in our backyard (meyer, eureka & pink lemonade lemons they looked like a verigated watermelon on the outside and were pink inside, all three had just the right balance of sweet/tart and could be eaten right off the tree/Bearss and a tiny lime that was originally mislabled so no idea on what kind/Huge ruby red grapefruit/washington navel orange and dancy tangerine). I did discover that you can not only freeze the juice, but also the zest, so whenever you can find a good deal on any citrus fruit, zest it and then juice it and put it in the freezer. I use ice cube trays each cube is roughly 2 tablespoons.

tkins

Re: What is going on with limes?

ennui1 — Thu, 01 May 2014 22:04:46 GMT

On 4/27/2014 shoekitty said:
I live in California in the Santa Clara Valley, which used to produce most of the worlds fruit. Most of the farms and ranches have been sold off. If you ask the landowners, the reason is, their kids don't want to farm anymore. With price of land, and developers chomping at the bit to build, the land has been sold for homes. I live in a City that produced most of the garlic in the country. I know the landowners. They said they worked to send their kids to college (babyboomers), the kids got jobs outside farming. Much of the land here held in family trusts, and by surviving family since late 1800's. It is just being parceled and sold for outlets and homes. You can hardly find strawberry farms anymore.

RE Strawberries, there are lots of farms in Watsonville, Castroville, Salinas.

Lime shortage: http://www.mercurynews.com/breaking-news/ci_25660246/high-lime-prices-giving-us-bartenders-hangover

Re: What is going on with limes?

adelle38 — Thu, 01 May 2014 22:08:19 GMT

The increase in lime prices is linked to Mexican drug cartels

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2014/03/25/mexican-drug-cartel-lime-prices_n_5025873.html

Re: What is going on with limes?

ninjawife — Thu, 01 May 2014 22:16:55 GMT

On 4/26/2014 skuggles said:
""the shortage is expected to be short lived."" from Medical Daily Good harvest in May

Thank goodness. I have been going through margarita withdraw as I can't bring myself to spend 1.99 for a single lime.