Where have all the Limes gone?
Limes are used for nutrition, as medicine, and, for aesthetically pleasing accents. But, have you noticed? Limes have all but disappeared from your local grocer, corner store and flower markets. Where have all the limes gone!
A case of limes used to cost as little as $30; prices have shot up to as high as $200. And the limes are smaller — golf-ball-size fruit that doesn’t produce much juice.
Mexico is now the world’s largest producer and exporter of limes, and provides some 95 percent of United States supplies. Generally, the lime harvest is smaller and prices are higher from January through March, but in November and December severe rains knocked the blossoms off lime trees in many areas, reducing lime exports to the United States by two-thirds. California, with just 373 acres, is now the largest domestic lime source — but it produces less than 1 percent of national consumption, and its season is late summer and fall, so it’s no help right now.
Other factors may also be squeezing the lime market. Since 2009 a bacterial disease that kills citrus trees, huanglongbing (HLB, also known as “greening”), has spread across many of Mexico’s lime-growing districts.
As a result of high prices and rampant lawlessness in some Mexican regions, criminals who may be linked to drug gangs are plundering fruit from groves and hijacking trucks being used for export.
All of this suggests an uncertain fate for limes, a fruit we’ve taken for granted for so long. This time the crisis is likely to be temporary. As new crops mature, prices should be back down near $30 by June, and there should be plenty of limes this summer.
