Nash Produce LLC supplies sweet potatoes 52 weeks per year and the Nashville, N.C.-based company is preparing for the start of cucumber packing around mid-June, said Thomas Joyner, president. Growers have been planting cucumbers for spring harvest, and the first cycle of plantings will be ready for harvest about June 10-15, Joyner said. This year’s growing conditions were extraordinarily wet through March, he said. April saw virtually no rain, he said.
“We are not in bad shape, but we could use some rain,” Joyner said, noting erratic weather in early May.
While growers have H-2A workers, Nash Produce doesn’t use the program for its packinghouse labor and Joyner said availability is tight. “It is a continual battle to be sure we have people to work, and it’s made us nervous,” he said. “We have not hired for the cucumber operation this summer, and we need a significant number of people for that. Unquestionably, labor is a huge, huge issue.”
Sweet potato outlook
Sweet potato planting season isn’t far off, he said, with sweet potato plants bedded and growers set to start transplanting in the fields beginning in mid-May. North Carolina’s acreage of sweet potatoes could be about the same to down a little bit compared with a year ago, he said. High soybean and corn prices could draw some growers to plant those crops instead of sweet potatoes this year, he said.
Compared with produce crops, there is much less investment and risk if growers can lock in higher prices on soybeans and corn.
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“That may not be a bad thing, all in all,” he said. “We are seeing some inflation overall in the costs of labor, chemicals and fuel. At the end of the day, getting everybody’s (sweet potato) acreage down a little bit might not be a bad idea; we need to get prices up a little bit.”
Joyner said there are reports that packaging costs are 12% to 13% higher this year. “We are seeing inflation in real time,” he said, noting that some fertilizer suppliers are not pricing the fertilizer to growers until they deliver it because prices have been so volatile.
Strong outlook
The long-term trajectory of sweet potato demand is strong, Joyner said, with per capita consumption still rising. Marketers of sweet potatoes are benefiting from the appeal of a produce item that consumers in the U.S. and Europe want. “We are trying to keep it growing,” he said. Nash Produce expects to transition out of the old crop to the new crop sweet potato supplies by late September or early October. Joyner said new crop harvest will begin around early September and then those freshly harvested potatoes will go through a curing process. “Ideally, when we transition from old crop to the new, the consumer never knows and we are able to maintain consistency throughout,” he said. Joyner said Nash Produce has good availability of organic sweet potatoes, and he said the company expects organic availability to grow this year.
COVID-19 rebound
Market conditions for foodservice have recovered some, Joyner said. “We would like to see the foodservice (market) fully recover and hopefully it will in the next four to six months, and ideally we will get this COVID situation in the rearview mirror,” he said.
