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News


FLORIDA CITRUS GROWERS EXPERIENCED THE BIGGEST PRODUCTION DROP IN EIGHT DECADES.

WLRN 91.3 FM | By Jim Turner | News Service of Florida
Published July 13, 2022 at 5:09 PM EDT
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Chris O'Meara
/
AP Photos
An orange blossom grows alongside some ripening fruit in a grove on Dec. 11,
2013, in Plant City, Fla.

Florida citrus growers recorded a very slight bump in orange production in the
final count of the growing season, but the industry still experienced one of its
most-devastating seasons in eight decades.



The U.S. Department of Agriculture on Tuesday, in a final report for the
2021-2022 season, said growers produced 40.95 million boxes of oranges, the
lowest amount since the 1942-1943 season. That was up slightly from a June
forecast of 40.7 million boxes — but was a 22.7 percent decline from the
2020-2021 season.



Similarly, grapefruit production ended the season 19.5 percent below the
2020-2021 total, and specialty fruits — tangerines and tangelos — were down 15.7
percent.



The industry has faced troubles for years because of issues such as a bacterial
disease known as citrus greening. But the COVID-19 pandemic increased demand for
orange juice from people seeking healthier drink options, driving some optimism.



“This is not an industry that we're ready to give up on,” Matt Joyner, executive
vice president and CEO of Florida Citrus Mutual, said Tuesday.



Shelley Rossetter, the Florida Department of Citrus’ assistant director of
global marketing, said growers are focused on moving forward.



“While challenges remain, one thing is clear: the Florida citrus industry is
committed to continuing to grow great tasting Florida citrus for years to come,”
Rossetter said.



Along with citrus greening, the industry has struggled with issues such as
development pressures, increasing labor costs and lingering impacts from 2017
hurricanes, including Hurricane Irma, which tore through major citrus areas. The
industry and state have taken a variety of steps to try to deal with citrus
greening, which is more formally known as huanglongbing, or HLB.



“We are fortunate to have the tools, funding, and people in place to move us
forward on the path toward a solution to HLB,” Rossetter said. “With support
from the governor and state Legislature, the industry is now working on a
program to expedite the propagation of plant materials that may be tolerant or
resistant to HLB.”



Also during this season, growers suffered through a winter freeze that
significantly affected groves in Highlands and DeSoto counties and could impact
the 2022-2023 harvest.



“Along with fruit that we had to salvage, (growers) also lost a fair amount of
that bloom for next year's crop, which was already starting to come out,” Joyner
said. “They'll put new bloom on and new fruit on, but we're just not sure yet
what the impacts of losing that early bloom are going to be.”



The state budget that went into effect July 1 included $37 million for the
industry, with the biggest chunks of money being $17 million for Department of
Citrus marketing programs, $8 million for research programs, and $6.2 million
for what is known as the Citrus Health Response Program, which includes
cultivating new trees resistant to greening.



The state, which more than two decades ago produced about 200 million boxes of
oranges a season, produced 52.95 million boxes of oranges in the 2020-2021
season and 67.4 million boxes in 2019-2020.



Joyner said that since the 2017 hurricane damage, the industry has put in 68,000
new acres of citrus trees. Officials hope that will gradually add 8 million to
13 million boxes a year in production.



“We're getting new trees in the ground. We see growers trying to invest in the
future through those new plantings. We know that that research is starting to
yield some horticultural practices that we hope will maintain and possibly even
increase the productivity of our current inventory of trees,” Joyner said.
“That's critical. We can't completely start over. New plantings take four or
five years to come online. So, there’s sort of a suite of things that we hope
are going to start to swing that pendulum back to the greater levels of
productivity.”



The state ended the season producing 3.3 million boxes of grapefruit, the lowest
total for a single season since 1917-2018. The grapefruit numbers were down from
4.1 million boxes in 2020-2021 and 4.85 million in 2019-2020. In the 1990s, the
state averaged around 50 million boxes of grapefruit a season.



The state produced 750,000 boxes of specialty fruits, the lowest for a single
season since 1925-1926. That amount was off from 890,000 a season ago and 1.02
million boxes in 2019-2020.


TAGS

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Jim Turner | News Service of Florida

See stories by Jim Turner | News Service of Florida
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