I went to my local grocery store, and they had a sign that said they couldn’t honor a promised sale on blueberries due to “weather”, and they were offering blackberries instead. They did have some organic blueberries at a decent price. The organic ones were the last of the Chilean crop, and the sparse supply of not-on-sale, not-organic blueberries were from America.
I then went to whole foods, which had no blueberries at all. (And had a lot of other holes in the produce aisles, fwiw.)
I haven’t heard of any weather crises in Texas or Florida, which is where i think domestic blueberries would be coming from at this time of year.
I just checked the web sites for my local Safeway and Whole Foods. They both claim to have blueberries in stock, at what seems to be about the usual prices. I’m in California.
Blueberries are a staple for my wife, and a weekly purchase. I’ve seen some wide oscillations in blueberry prices over the last couple of months. Something else I’ve noticed, at five different supermarkets (two local chains and three national) ALL the blueberries are now from one company, Glacier something or other.
My Walmart has them listed online. With a rollback.
But…they don’t have any in the store.
I looked today. Just perusing the produce. I was surprised. They are usually stacked right by the strawberries in a bin.
The Mexican strawberries looked a bit green to me. So I passed them up.
Bought apples and bananas.
Blueberry season up here is only a month or two in the summer. I am a big blueberry fan, and I watch them start in Florida and Texas, move up the East Coast, and then end in Wisconsin and Canada before shifting to the South American crop. They are cheapest when the new Jersey crop peaks.
They also routinely go on sale when the Chilean crop peaks. Chile grows some high quality blueberries.
Anyway, i picked MPSIMS instead of FQ so as not to rule out related chatter, but i really was hoping someone knew something about what’s up with the crop. I didn’t think this is about tariffs, both because the sign said “weather”, and also because it seems to be the early US crop that’s missing.
But if farm workers are afraid to show up, we’re going to be short on a lot of produce this year.
Given the political climate in your country, I would not be at all surprised if the stores cited “weather” as the reason they are short of stock, rather than telling the truth that it’s down to tariffs and a lack of migrant workers Nobody knows the real consequences of honesty now, do they?
Can’t imagine why the US might be having problems importing goods that internationally come from Mexico, Peru, and Vietnam, and are domestically labored by workers who come from some of those same places. Total mystery. Crazy weather we’re having over here!
Well as a Canadian, who buys blueberries every week, for hubs who loves em in his morning cereal, I never really noticed where those berries originated, to be honest. The price was stable and the berries were yummy, good enough for me!
Then the Donald came to office, offended your greatest trade partner and stores started stocking what people wanted, because US goods weren’t moving, as it were.
This caused me to purchase berries from Peru. Well my goodness these are some outstanding berries, I have to say!
Fat, firm, juicy and delicious. Not a single spoiled or shrivelled berry in the bunch. Not a one. Time after time, always just the same.
Honestly as long as they’re stocking them I’m gonna buy from Peru. Amazing berries, I’m not going back, I can’t go back!
I feel like this is the opening to some sci-fi dystopian drama.
No one could imagine it, that in the second decade of the twenty-first century, after decades of easy access to all the goods of fortune, that the scarcity of a simple fruit, blueberries of all things, heralded the end of all. Blamed on “the weather”, what really caused this shortage was The Winds of Change…Powerful men, greedy men, had spent years observing the United States, and jealous of its wealth, had drawn up their plans, and slowly brought them to fruition.
Chile and Peru provide blueberries in their summer/our winter. But i always buy them in preference to the Texas/Florida early crop, during the time they overlap. They are typically very good quality, with a nice blueberry flavor.
(I always look at the origin of fruit. Climate matters so much in growing fruit. You can infer a lot about the quality by knowing where it came from.)
Anyway, it’s the US deputy that seems to be in short supply. So, maybe labor issues, or maybe it really was weather. But probably not tariffs.
We’ll build a stockade from blueberry stems and Mexico is going to pay for the pickers watchmen.
A blackberry bramble would be more effective and more valuable ecologically, if you ask me, but nobody does ask me, so enjoy the stockade.
Food Lion has blueberries - at least they did yesterday. But what I can’t find is low-fat cottage cheese, of all things. I’ve been looking for a couple of weeks now. Weird.
Nobody knows the real consequences of honesty now, do they?