The Road to Nogales

Arizona Sky’s Franzone adds, “Greenhouse-grown commodities continue to become more popular because of better yields and consistency,” noting more than two-thirds of the company’s cucumbers are sourced from green-houses, and both “peppers and tomatoes aren’t far behind.”

Grower-shipper Fresh Farms in Nogales specializes in winter cantaloupe, watermelon, peppers, squash, cucumbers, and grapes, and some of the produce is grown in protected structures. “Everything we source is from Mexico,” says Jerry Havel, Fresh Farms’ director of sales and marketing, and “our peppers and cucumbers are grown in shade houses.”

Higher Demand for Specialty Items
Bennan says climbing demand for ethnic and specialty items has propelled Ta-De Distributing in a new direction, introducing the company’s “first specialty label, Red Lotus, back in October. We pack items such as colored beans, bitter melon, Asian eggplant, and other exotic items that have risen in demand over the past few years.”

Most are shipped to major metropolitan areas like San Francisco and cities in Southern California, Bennan adds. “We’re also expanding our program into the Midwest and possibly Canada,” he says, where these commodities are ‘niche items’ for “foodies and millennials who are adventurous cooks.”

Organics on the Rise
“One trend we’ve observed in the last twelve months is a growing demand for organics,” Havel confirms. “We’ll be shipping organic grape tomatoes, zucchini, yellow squash, and some organic grapes next spring. It seems like buyers are remembering high quality more than price,” he notes.

Franzone also sees growth in traditionally ethnic products as well as organics. “We ship a lot of product to the Toronto market and the mix has changed with the growth of Middle Eastern, Indian, and Pakistani populations there. We’ve been shipping more items like Indian eggplant, okra, Persian cucumbers, and kabocha squash. Kabocha squash alone has grown 250 percent since 2005. As for organics, many of our customers, who for years only bought conventionally grown produce, are now ordering 10 to 15 percent organic.”

El Niño & Weather Pains
Last October the arrival of Patricia, a category-five hurricane and the most powerful tropical cyclone ever measured in the Western hemisphere, made landfall near the city of Manzanillo, in Colima, along the northwestern coast of Mexico.

The hurricane had everyone expecting the worst in damage to the western growing states of Nayarit, Durango, and Sinaloa—but luckily, there was not widespread devastation. “According to growers in the northern part of Sinaloa, there was no damage,” reports Miguel B. Lopez, who runs sales at Ocotillo Produce, Inc., a shipper and broker specializing in mangos.