I don’t get how say a strawberry grower/supplier for a major supermarket, grows and supplies continuous amounts of strawberries (or any other food item grown) to be able to supply the whole country on a mass basis.
Surely, once the ripe ones have been picked you have to wait ages for them to grow again. How on earth is there ever enough to supply so much all the time?
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A lot of fruit in the offseason is grown in greenhouses and transported long distances. That’s why it’s so much more expensive than local fruit.
If you grow too much local fruit, you can either flash freeze it to sell it year round, or you sell it to someone to make jam out of it.
Mostly the use of petroleum based fertilizer. Fertilizers and greenhouses with lighting can keep some crops growing all year. Also advanced cold storage with oxygen removal helps, store fruit long term.
So grapes is a good example of, and I forget the term for it, growing in stages based on the climate of the region they are in. For example, one variety of grapes will be grown first in the northernmost area when it’s at its peak for growing, then the next region will start when it’s the best time to start, etc. so table grape(though different varieties) will always be available/“in season” and ripe as the growers take advantage of the fact that different varieties of grapes can grow in different regions who all have different climates at any given time of year. I’m sure strawberries are similar, they grown them in stages based on the region to take advantage of the peak growing climate of the region. Off season, they can be grown in greenhouses as well
Strawberries in a grocery store come from different locations depending on time of year. They may come from Mexico during the winter, California in the spring and fall, Michigan in the summer.
Some fruits, like apples, can be stored for a long time if the temperature, humidity, air mixture is controlled (the average grocery store apple was picked 15 months prior). Bananas can also be stored in specific conditions to speed up or slow ripening.
We have fast transportation, and can ship fruit from places where it’s always warm, or where they have greenhouses.
Fruit also has relatively stable demand. Somebody out there knows roughly how many strawberries that people will buy each year. And that guy’s company buys strawberries from farmers around the world and ships them to the places where people buy them.
So yes, individual farmers will have strawberry plants that produce a certain number of berries, and then they’re done for the year. Suppose that Farmer John harvests his strawberries in June (note: I don’t know when strawberries are harvested). But there’s also Farmer Juan down in Mexico, and he’s got a crop that will be harvested in August. And then there’s a company in Florida (where it’s always warm) that specifically plants theirs in different months, so they are ready to harvest in October. Or whenever.
But it’s kind of the same every single year, so people have worked out a schedule. They buy from the same people every year, and everybody knows ahead of time how much they need to plant.
I work for a company that has greenhouses. You get multiple harvests from one plant. Our tomatoes produce fruit for 36 weeks. We also dont have all of our ranges planted on the same schedule so even when one crop ends another crop in a different range has started.
If you live somewhere that the winters aren’t very harsh, you can grow things year round. It’s not always the most fruitful but possible.
I learned this when I planted half a pumpkin from Halloween last November and it sprouted in January. I harvested two pumpkins last month.
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