Produce Prices as High as an Elephant’s Eye : Agriculture: Storm damage has put lettuce at $2 a head in California, $2.65 in New York. But the worst of the increases may be over.

U.S. consumers are feeling the full impact of California’s soggy winter as price spikes in lettuce, broccoli, cauliflower, spinach, celery and other crops have rippled across the country.

Wholesale lettuce prices are now four times higher than they were a year ago, and a head of lettuce is now selling for more than $2 in West Coast supermarkets and $2.65 at a typical street-corner produce stand in New York City. And while some produce costs are predicted to ease soon, higher-than-normal prices are likely to be with shoppers into the summer.

“Everything I’ve seen says we’re going to be in this roller-coaster market through June,” said Bob Krauter, a spokesman for the California Farm Bureau, who blames disruptions in planting in Monterey County, where more than half the nation’s supplies of the worst-hit vegetables are grown. “Beyond (June), there’s going to be more stability in the market,” he said.

Overall damage to California agriculture from this winter’s storms is now estimated at $763 million. But consumers are also starting to receive some good news on the price front.

California strawberries have already largely recovered from the flooding and will be priced about the same as in previous years in time for Easter this weekend, when supermarkets traditionally offer specials on the fruit.

First reports of the damage to the state’s strawberry patch, which suffered more than $63 million in flood losses, caused some consumers to shy away from the fruit.

“Demand fell off from so many media reports that we were done,” said Teresa Thorne, spokeswoman for the California Strawberry Commission. In fact, Thorne said, “we have a consistent supply, with good quality.”

As with lettuce, prices have already dropped from last week’s dramatic highs on the Los Angeles wholesale market. On Tuesday, a standard box of two dozen heads of iceberg lettuce cost $23 to $25; red and green leaf, Boston and romaine ran $25 to $28 a box.

This is a big drop from the $40 to $50 a box charged last week for California lettuce. But it is still quadruple the $6 to $7 a box that wholesale lettuce sold for at this time last year.

Other produce prices are also high compared to L.A. wholesale prices on April 1, 1994. On Tuesday, celery was running 350% above last year; spinach, 150%; broccoli, 67%.

But even with lettuce, which has suffered some of the worst storm damage, most farm experts predict that the worst of the price increases are over.

In the wholesale market last week, “there was some extreme marketing going on, with perhaps some panic buying,” said Tom Karst, markets editor at the Packer, a Lenexa, Kan.-based industry newsletter.

“Retailers don’t really want to have any prices above $2 a head,” Karst said. But even with lettuce prices dropping somewhat between now and June, Karst estimated, they will hold at “well above a dollar anyway, though you will also see some prices at $1.39 a head.”

Farther down the line, some farmers see an equally dramatic drop in prices after June.

“Then prices are going to fall on their butt, there’s so much planting going on right now,” said David F. Gardoni, president of the Monterey County Farm Bureau and a lettuce grower in the Salinas Valley.

* NO INFLATION: Wholesale prices were stable in March, the best performance in five months. D2