Alex Tiller forecasts a price spike in the cost of salads and melons in the US this summer as a result of a drought in California’s Central Valley. Farmers are abandoning those crops to save water for even more valuable crops, like almonds. Tiller suggests that
The coming cost spikes in lettuce and melon may provide incentives for growers outside the “melon belt†to invest in the production of these popular fruit and vegetable crops.
Right. But unless those farmers can fashion some kind of new deal with their buyers they’ll be able to kiss goodbye to their investment and their income just as soon as California gets another normally wet season, which it will, soon enough. Prices will plummet, and the buyers will abandon (more) local suppliers to save a couple of cents. You mark my words.
As near as I can tell, here in California, the leafy vegetable growers exist on the thinnest of margins as it is. Basically they make enough to pay the bills in an average year, and depend on some one else’s crop to fail periodically so they can get the occasional season with higher prices to actually make some money.