Storing Avocados on the Tree
Tim Hammerich
News Reporter
Chris Sayer is a 5th generation farmer and the Ranch Manager at the Petty Ranch in Ventura County. He has avocados ready for harvest but like the lemons you heard about yesterday, the lack of restaurant demand is hurting the avocado market as well.
Sayer… “Well, avocados are very largely sold into food service and restaurant supply chains. And so while retail avocado sales to picked up about 5%or 10% that doesn't do a lot for offsetting the 30% or 40% of the business which has been lost with the shutdown in food service. So for us, strategically, we're going to take advantage of one of the superpowers of avocados, which is that they can hang on the tree at maturity for several months. Normally we would be picking about now. We are going to push the harvest on those into June or maybe July. And our Lamb Hass, which will be the bulk of our crop this year, which normally we would harvest in August. We think we'll be able to hold those into September and maybe even October. And we'll just see what the markets look like then. So far, the ability to spread the avocado harvest out a little bit has helped to keep the prices up, at least for the first grade fruit.”
Please continue to keep our farmers in mind during this challenging time, and buy California produce whenever possible.