Not giving up without a fight

I was reading a story this morning about the "high cost" of fresh fruits and vegetables. Titled "High Produce Prices Hurt Low Income People," the author quotes from one source that suggests to save by "avoiding fresh."

Moores pointed out that a great way to save money and keep fruits and vegetables in your diet is to look in the canned or frozen section. Fresh fruit must be shipped quickly, which drives up the cost, but canned or frozen may have been picked months before."I know there are solutions to (cost). People should look more toward frozen and canned, because then you get strawberries in January, and they are frozen, but the nutritional quality of both canned and frozen is as good and some would argue better than it would be for fresh … Usually, for canned and certainly for frozen, the produce is picked at the peak of its ripeness, and so therefore it is at the peak of its nutritional quality, and then it is processed very quickly.

TK: No doubt there are merits to the idea that processed fruits and veggies offer value. However, I was pleased to see a source with HyVee was not easily steamrolled into the position that "avoiding fresh" makes sense. From the story:

Chris Friesleben, director of communications for Hy-Vee, which operates more than 200 food retail stores in the Midwest, said the price of produce is always fluctuating."Produce is really an iffy commodity," said Friesleben. "A lot of the price is determined by supply, and a lot of the supply is subject to weather. So, weather plays a big role in the price if you have a bad season."Two of the country's biggest suppliers of fruits and vegetables are Florida and California, both of which have been rocked by severe weather in recent years. Brutal hurricane seasons in Florida and severe rains, wild fires and deep freezes in California have adversely affected those state's crops.In January 2007, four nights of freezing temperatures wiped out more than $1 billion of the orange crop in California, which caused the prices of oranges to double, according to USA Today.Friesleben said that while prices may have gone up in recent years, Hy-Vee's produce departments have not seen a drop in sales."We have seen (sales) them stay steady or go up," Friesleben said. "And our produce departments are growing. Every time we open a new store, it seems like we add more square footage space to our produce department."Friesleben said that fruits and vegetables are a commodity like gasoline -- even when the prices go up, sales do not drop significantly because it is a vital part of people's lives and they probably just cut down on their budget in other areas."I am sure it does affect how much they can buy, or the variety that they can buy, but they understand it is important to their diet, so depending on what their food budget is, they will buy some fruits and vegetables," said Friesleben. "People are willing to cut a little out of the food budget in center store. They won't buy as many canned goods, for example, or maybe they will cut down on the ice cream or the meats."

TK: Friesleben gives a strong defense of fresh produce and the popularity of fresh fruits and vegetables. The assumptions in the article make it sound as if Mother Nature is doling out one disaster after another to our nation's produce growers, to the unavoidable detriment of shoppers. Yet week after week, there is value in the produce department in food section ads. Perhaps acknowledgment of the role of imports in helping to temper weather-related price shocks would have been illuminating to consumers as well.