When’s the cheapest time to make strawberry jam?

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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