--COLD IN THE DESERT: Mother Nature is once again turning a cold shoulder to farmers in the desert of California and Arizona, the place where most of our broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, celery, iceberg and leaf lettuce are coming from. Cold, freezing temperatures do more to disrupt produce supplies, quality and pricing than any other weather or marketing condition. Yuma, Arizona produces about 90% of the nation’s lettuce, broccoli and cauliflower this time of year. The city of Yuma sits on a mesa surrounded by the Yuma and the Gila rivers. Native American Indians, dating back to the 1500s grew their crops in this rich, fertile flood plain of the Colorado and Gila Rivers. Yuma is Arizona's warmest winter city and the sunniest year round place in the US, with an annual average of 4,133 hours of sunshine. Normally, this time of year, when crops are growing, average daytime temperatures will get into the upper-70s to mid-80s, while the nights will reach down to just around 45 – 50 degrees. Cool nights and warm days. Perfect for growing lettuce, broccoli and cauliflower. But that’s not what farmers have been dealing with recently. Daytime temperatures are reaching barely to 60 degrees, while night temperatures are dipping to near freezing levels. The cold will slow growth. In fact, usually below 65 degrees, plants nearly stop growing. Some Cauliflower heads haven’t sized up in almost a week. Another element affecting supplies is harvest hours. With normal temperatures, growers are able to harvest about 9-10 hours a day. Because of frost in the fields, they can’t get workers in until around 10 – 11 am. They are losing about 3 hours of harvest time every day. Bottom line is that on top of slow growth, growers are short about 1/3 of the product every day. That adds up quickly to supply gaps and much higher prices, which is what we have. We expect this supply disruption right into February. Once warm weather hits again, we could see several fields come into production all at once, which could mean much better pricing as well.