BAJA CALIFORNIA - Tight supplies are leading to a high bell pepper market.

The situation that led to this tighter market began before Hurricane Patricia, one of the largest hurricanes on record, made landfall on the Pacific Coast of Mexico last October. While a majority of Mexican growers avoided the impact from the storms in Culiacan, Sinaloa, some farms were soaked with rain.  

And as we saw last week, the heavy precipitation fueled in part from El Niño drenched parts of Baja California, but growers are thankful to report that the flooding has not impacted them. 

While there have been some ups and downs with the weather, Mike Aiton, Prime Time’s Marketing Director, tells us that the company escaped the brunt of the damage from the floods.

“For a change, we dodged that bullet there this time around,” he explains. “We did suffer some problems several months ago there, but have since worked through them.”

Still, the increased precipitation is not helping matters on the production-side. Cloudy days and cold weather are having an adverse effect on the setting of flowers and pollination for new fruits, other growers share. 

“With the cloudy weather and lower temperatures, there is talk that several growers are harvesting colored peppers as green peppers to take advantage of a good market, but if this happens, it just means there will be fewer colored peppers to come,” one grower explains.

The weather isn’t expected to be a problem in the long-term, as temperatures are expected to get back up to 90 degrees in the near future. The increase in temperature should help volumes come on and fill the supply hole that growers have had in the past couple of months.

Stay tuned to AndNowUKnow for any further updates.