Florida can't pick up Calif.'s citrus slack

Well it's not like they aren't trying, but that sound you hear are the prices going up for citrus


Copied from the Herald Tribune dated January 17, 2007

DESOTO COUNTY — Sure, Florida can take up some of the slack for the ravaged California citrus crop, but that doesn’t mean it is going to be easy.Florida does not grow much supermarket-style fruit for one thing. It is more of an afterthought for most growers. Ninety percent of Florida oranges make their way to big juicers like Bradenton’s Tropicana Products Inc.The second complication is that because of the citrus canker disease that has devastated a good portion of Florida’s crop, growers here cannot ship fresh fruit to California or any of 10 other citrus-producing states, such as Texas or Arizona.For any of Florida’s fresh orange providers to meet the demand left behind by California’s freeze, they would have to ship directly to the customers in other states, bypassing California.And Florida and California oranges are quite different.The Sunshine State’s fruit has thinner skins and is more prone to wind scars and other blemishes that make it unsuitable for table fruit. The trade-off is that Florida has sub-tropical weather conditions that make most orange varieties grown here much more juice-filled than the Golden State variety.Despite any complications, Southwest Florida growers remain optimistic that they will reap something positive from California’s painful winter freeze.Last year, they did not think they would not have much of a market at all for their fresh citrus because of canker.“Anyone who has fresh oranges will certainly be filling the void caused by the California freeze,” said Barbara Carlton, executive director of the Peace River Valley Citrus Growers Association, which counts about 300 growers in Southwest Florida among its members.“This could be a very good thing for those who have fresh fruit. That’s agriculture: One man’s problem is another man’s benefit.”Tom Spreen, one of the state’s top citrus economists, shared Carlton’s optimism.“I see a big jump in the fresh citrus price,” said Spreen, the chairman of the Food and Resource Economics Department at the University of Florida in Gainesville.Spreen predicted the California freeze would push fresh orange prices at least another 15 percent higher. “That’s not a bad price,” said Richard Kinney, the chief executive of Florida Citrus Packers in Lakeland, the industry’s trade group. “This will help us increase our margins.”Joshua Citrus, a DeSoto County gift fruit shipper operating a grove off of U.S. 31 near Arcadia, already is seeing the price for wholesale “table fruit” rising because of California’s icicles.“It will affect our wholesale business because the price has gone up due to the shortage of California navels,” said Lynn Shelfer, co-owner of the business with her husband, Kevin. “It’s very unfortunate for them, but the price has gone up already.“It’s a terrible thing, and I feel very sorry for those people. We might be next: The winter’s not over yet.”Ripple effectThe weather in California is even affecting businesses in DeSoto County that don’t grow citrus but feed the people who do.When Martha Clement was opening her Arcadia restaurant, Slim’s Bar-B-Q & Grill, on Wednesday morning, her produce supplier had some bad news: the price of a 200-count box of limes was going to double, from about $20 to about $40.“We can’t adjust our prices that fast so we’ll just bite the bullet. We’re already going into the mode that some items will be unavailable.” Clement said.“What wasn’t impacted, those prices have skyrocketed. We are already in the mode of ‘prep only what you’ll need.’”If the California freeze has any effect on juice processing, it will occur when processors and packinghouses start competing for late-season Valencia oranges, which are not harvested until March. By the time the freeze hit, California growers had picked 25 percent to 30 percent of its early season navel orange crop, said Duke Chadwell, the manager of the Citrus Administrative Committee in Lakeland. Because California Valencias were still on the tree when the freeze hit, they probably incurred the biggest losses, Spreen said. Before the freeze, the USDA estimated at the California Valencia crop at 13 million boxes. Florida processors were offering about $13.50 on tree for Valencia oranges before the freeze, he said, and even at the price, not many growers were selling.The on-tree price represents the price growers get from the packinghouse after deducting harvesting, transportation and packing costs. It does not account for the grower’s caretaking and other production expenses. Growers got an average $6.47 per box on tree for juice Valencias and $5 a box for fresh Valencias in the 2005-06 season, according to preliminary USDA statistics. Processors pay more for Valencias because it’s used in most not-from-concentrate, or NFC, juice products, the most widely sold type of orange juice. So processors and packinghouses could get into a real bidding war over the Florida Valencia crop, estimated at just 65 million boxes this season, Spreen said. That, in turn, will drive the retail prices for NFC orange juice and fresh Valencia oranges even higher, he said. “It’s going to be pretty expensive (for the consumer) this year,” he said. The good news for Florida processors and packinghouses is that on-tree prices probably won’t double, Spreen said, but that’s only because they began at a much higher level this season. Even with more Florida oranges going into the fresh market instead of the juice side, the effect will amount to a “minor negative” for OJ production, Spreen said.It might mean another 1 million orange boxes going fresh. “One million boxes is not that much fruit relative to the processing industry. It’s only a few million gallons.”