Mexican lime supply shortfall (2014)
Jan 2014: a documented market event that overlapped the wholesale price windows of 1 tracked ingredient — co-occurrence in time, never an asserted cause.
What happened
USDA ERS documented a sharp reduction in the supply of Mexican limes reaching the US in spring 2014. Contributing production factors included heavy rainfall in Veracruz, Mexico in late 2013 that reduced the Persian lime harvest and citrus greening disease affecting lime trees in Colima; theft and hijacking of shipments were also reported. About 98% of US-consumed limes are supplied by Mexico.
Documented account from our open, cited registry (sources below). Shown as context beside the price record — co-occurrence in time, never an asserted cause.
Affected ingredients
Why these ingredients were exposed
Each affected ingredient's public supply structure — where it comes from and how much it leans on imports. Context that makes the co-occurrence with a documented event legible, never its cause.
- LimeDomestically sourced comes almost entirely from domestic production, with little import buffer. Its exposure runs through domestic production structure, not import origins — a domestic event overlaps its price window.
It explains why an ingredient sits in the path of a documented event — not that the event caused any price move. Co-occurrence in time, never a cause.
The detected moves that overlapped
Each figure is a wholesale reference against its own ±26-week normal — a market move, never a delivered price.
Lime — Apr 2014: the wholesale reference ran +538% above its ±26-week normal, held 155 days.
Co-occurrence in time, not a cause.
What moved together
Co-occurrence, not cause
Lime
In Lime's 6 notable moves, these ingredients ran the same direction in the same weeks:
Moving in the same weeks is not one thing causing another — many of these share a growing region, a shipping lane, or an aisle. It is a directed, bounded count: in K of an ingredient's own notable moves, another ran the same way.
Sources
2 sources
- Shortage of Mexican limes leads to sharp spike in U.S. prices — USDA Economic Research Service
- The Lime Shortage: Still Messing With Your Margarita — NPR
Documented events come from our open, cited registry (CC‑BY). Price moves are detected from public history (USDA/BLS/FRED) and shown as co-occurring context, never asserted as the cause. How events are picked.