Exporters continue focusing to sell current crop for nearby shipments. However most of the demand is concentrated on new crop qualities for forward shipments. One of the largest roasters succeeded to obtain (MTGB GC Quality)…

California walnut brokers and growers, struggling to market a record-shattering 2008 harvest – nearly 160 million pounds of nuts more than the previous record – got a boost Tuesday from the federal school lunch program.

China is expected to dominate world markets in 2009 by producing 28.5 million tonnes of apples, says Desmond O’Rourke, Publisher, World Apple Report. Put into context, that’s seven times what the country produced in 1990.

More than 50,000 ha of processing tomatoes are grown and 600,000 ton ketchup are produced per year in Xinjiang province. It represents 80 per cent of the processed tomato output in China, and over 13 per cent globally…

Many processing plants are finishing the purchase of root vegetables and brassicas and they are preparing for the purchase of spinach.Last year the purchase of spinach in processing plants was started at the end of April.

Speculative trading on outside market influences weighed on ICE Futures U.S. arabica coffee Wednesday as the market consolidated recent gains. May coffee settled 125 points lower at $1.1450 a pound, and the July contract also settled 125…

Guatemalan coffee exports in March, the sixth month of the current 2008-09 crop cycle, were down 14% to 460,075 bags of 60 kilograms each, the Guatemalan Coffee Association, Anacafe, said Wednesday.

We have passed half of the 4 weeks of frost risk without any warning and the weather forecast remains favourable. So, if the conditions remain unchanged during the next 10 days, we can consider that the risk of disastrous crop (350 to 450 000t) will be away.

The U.S. recall of pistachio nuts due to potential salmonella contamination widened as more snack makers and retailers removed their nuts from store shelves as a precautionary measure.

At the beginning of the week, a vigorous cold front was exiting California to the east. Residual showers lingered over the Sierra Nevada range and along the northwest coastal region. By Tuesday, high pressure aloft brought clearing skies while a surface…

Oil, copper, coffee and corn fell on Wednesday as caution returned to commodities markets at the start of the second quarter after a strong showing in the first three months of 2009. Crude oil fell almost 5 percent in New York, plumbing further below the $50 a barrel…

Spillover from firm equities and commodities pushed ICE Futures U.S. arabica coffee higher Tuesday as speculative activity on macroeconomic sentiment trumped tight physical supplies. May arabica coffee futures settled up 275 points at $1.1575…

Exports in the first 5 months of coffee year 2008/09 (Oct-08 to Feb-09) have increased by 6.9% to 40.4 million bags compared to 37.8 million bags in the same period in the last coffee year. In the twelve months ending February 2009,…

U.S. citrus utilized production for the 2007-08 season is 13.0 million tons, up 24 percent from the 2006-07 season but 27 percent lower than the record high production of 17.8 million tons for the 1997-98 season. Florida accounted for 70 percent the total.

Tropicana Products is planning to launch Trop50, a new orange juice with 50% less sugar and calories, and no artificial sweeteners. According to the company, the new product is naturally sweetened from the stevia plant and…

The Food and Drug Administration says pistachios are one snack to avoid! The warning comes after central California-based Setton Pistachio, the nation’s second-largest pistachio processor, voluntarily recalled more than two million pounds of its roasted nuts shipped since last fall.