Mrs Beeton says June-July, and I’d have said about now, before the Wimbledon effect kicks in, but climate and customs have moved on. Prices abstracted from DEFRA, whose “prices are national averages of the most usual prices charged by wholesalers for selected home-grown fruit, vegetables and cut flowers and flowering pot plants at the wholesale markets in Birmingham, Bristol, Liverpool and New Spitalfields,” and who may be better at collecting data than constructing spreadsheets:
By averaging across 2015-9 you get a sense of a build-up towards Wimbledon on the last Monday of June (week 26/27) or whatever else is going on around that time – perhaps just an increase in temperature and general jollity:
Whole-season average:
I guess price variation across the season is dampened – the curve flattened – by retailers having a sustainable price strategy across the season rather than responding to wholesale price changes. In this they’re helped by direct contracts with large farmers and by their ability to import from happy Huelva:
Sub-/supra-Saharan strawberry-pickers' camp near Huelva on the Spanish Costa de la Luz https://t.co/k782ngW9Nd I'll never forget the olive-pickers I met living in low-slung, disused pigsties near Jaén one winter.
— SingingOrganGrinder (@elorganillero) May 23, 2018
Alex Brown, buyer at the rather more ethical allmanhall, has come up with a chart of imports vs domestic production for market, based on DEFRA stats that evaded my eyes:
Wikipedia shows world production (tonnes) perhaps doubling in ten years:
| Country | 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | 2009 | 2010 | 2011 | 2012 | 2013 | 2014 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 USA | 1,090,436 | 1,109,215 | 1,148,350 | 1,270,640 | 1,294,180 | 1,312,960 | 1,526,000 | 1,382,096 | 1,371,573 |
 Turkey | 211,127 | 250,316 | 261,078 | 291,996 | 299,940 | 302,416 | 353,173 | 372,498 | 376,070 |
 Spain | 330,485 | 269,139 | 281,240 | 266,772 | 275,355 | 262,730 | 290,843 | 312,466 | 291,870 |
 Egypt | 128,349 | 174,414 | 200,254 | 242,776 | 238,432 | 240,284 | 242,297 | 262,432 | 283,471 |
 Mexico | 191,843 | 176,396 | 207,485 | 233,041 | 226,657 | 228,900 | 360,426 | 379,464 | 458,972 |
 Russia | 227,000 | 230,400 | 180,000 | 185,000 | 165,000 | 184,000 | 174,000 | 188,000 | 189,000 |
 Japan | 190,700 | 191,400 | 190,700 | 184,700 | 177,500 | 177,300 | 163,200 | 165,600 | 164,000 |
 South Korea | 205,307 | 203,227 | 192,296 | 203,772 | 231,803 | 171,519 | 192,140 | 216,803 | 209,901 |
 Poland | 193,666 | 174,578 | 200,723 | 198,907 | 153,410 | 166,159 | 150,151 | 192,647 | 202,511 |
 Germany | 173,230 | 158,658 | 150,854 | 158,563 | 156,911 | 154,418 | 155,828 | 149,680 | 168,791 |
 Italy | 143,315 | 160,558 | 155,583 | 163,044 | 153,875 | 150,000 | 132,292 | 147,185 | 135,320 |
| Total world* | 5,841,237 | 5,863,228 | 6,009,730 | 6,621,803 | 6,597,733 | 6,762,262 | 7,548,931 | 7,886,315 | 8,114,373 |
My shredded head tells me that Tesco was at 5£/kg two weeks ago but have now dropped to 3.80-ish. New Spitalfields is just round the corner, so I may have an early breakfast there this week.
Here’s La Grande Sophie, sweetening her strawberries, Sucrer Les Fraises:
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