PRODUCE: WESTERN RAINS WILL YIELD RISE IN LOCAL PRICES

Record-breaking rains this winter in the nation's salad bowl area of southern California and Arizona will increase retail prices for fresh produce this week in area food stores, produce wholesalers warn.

"I expect to see some pretty hefty price increases this week in produce, mainly the leafy items, such as lettuce, cauliflower, broccoli and celery," said Benjy Proffer, owner and operator of Proffer Produce of Flat River.

Proffer's fleet of semi-trucks haul fresh produce from California and Arizona to the wholesale produce markets in St. Louis.

Frank Stinnett of Stinnett Wholesale Produce of Cape Girardeau said he's been told the wholesale price for a case of lettuce this week will increase from $18 to $25.

In addition, Stinnett says produce shippers have told him the quality of lettuce coming to market this week will be of lesser quality because of the wet weather.

"They're already cutting down on my shipments," he added.

The floodwaters that have plagued southern Arizona threaten to cause up to $100 million in losses to produce farmers in Yuma County, the state's main vegetable-growing area. Arizona is the nation's second largest producer of lettuce, cauliflower and broccoli, behind southern California.

Yuma County supplies most of the winter lettuce consumed in the United States and has an annual vegetable and grain output of about $275 million.

On Thursday, Arizona agriculture officials warned about $10 million worth of unharvested vegetables might be lost by the end of the week in the fertile Gila River Valley, which now resembles a gigantic rice paddy.

Prices for lettuce, broccoli and cauliflower are already rising and are likely to stay high for more than a month until harvests in southern California replace Yuma County as a supplier, according to produce industry officials.

But Stinnett says he received word Friday from a wholesale produce information network in California that the Imperial Valley and Blythe, Calif., areas were planted lighter than normal and will offer little, if any, relief to the produce shortage expected to develop this week in southern Arizona.

Stinnett said produce harvests at Bakersfield and Huron, Calif., are at least three weeks away. He said most shippers are reporting that major shortages in produce shipments will occur through March ... and even April and May look questionable.

Tim Lambert, produce manager at the Cape Girardeau Food Giant Store, said the retail price of lettuce may jump from 89-99 cents a head to as much as $1.50 a head by the end of this week. He said a bunch of broccoli that now costs 99 cents could go as high as $1.50.

"We're looking for celery to go up about that amount," Lambert said. "During a meeting with our supplier (Malone & Hyde, Inc.) in Sikeston, we were told the heavy rains and flooding not only damaged or destroyed part of the celery crop, but it also washed out the celery seed that had been planted in the fields. So it's going to be quite a while before we get anything from Arizona."

Lambert said lettuce will be available, but it will be expensive, and of poor quality, with lots of water and rust around the edges of the leaves.

The produce news isn't all bad, however. Stinnett said the winter supply of fresh tomatoes and cabbage from Florida has not been affected by bad weather.