Sweet Corn

Well, evidently most of you did not heed my plea to buy a lot of sweet corn in your local grocery stores. It looked like we had a perfect set-up for a profitable marketing season on our sweet corn. South Florida finished up earlier than normal, and shipped all of their corn out by Memorial Day weekend. The boys in south Georgia began harvesting corn with good movement and prices.


 And THEN along came Riverview to harvest our first planting on May 28th. That was the very day we were placed on restricted harvest and falling prices due to weak demand. In some ways, it is nice to know that we have enough power to single handedly move the market. I tend to think that we are a jinx, and have offered to my two partners to cease planting sweet corn if they will pay me a substantial insurance fee to stay out of the market , and allow them to sell at higher prices. They did not seem interested in my deal
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We never begin planting our sweet corn as early as most folks here because to do so would require us to begin planting shortly after Valentine's Day. We are still way too busy harvesting Yankees at that time to think about planting sweet corn. On the bright side, we are experiencing tremendous yields and great quality on the first three plantings that we have been allowed to nibble at picking each day. On the negative side, we figure that we are losing about 12 cents per crate on each harvested crate through today; so you folks really need to begin buying more corn. This is strictly a supply/demand business with no forward pricing and no safety net.

In closing this blog, I find it an interesting observation that for half of the year, I deal with the wealthiest and brightest folks in the world. At this time of the year, I am dealing with the other end of the spectrum. My problem is remembering which group I am talking to when trying to get our corn  harvested. The only Haitian word that I understand is "Boss". They also call me by another name that I understand, but can't write in a public forum.