ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — Florida’s citrus, fruit and vegetable crops appear to have escaped any widespread damage from some of the coldest weather in years, officials with state growers associations said Dec. 27.
A cloud cover helped protect citrus trees in areas where the thermometer hovered around or below freezing, though there may be pockets of damage, said Matt Joyner, CEO of Florida Citrus Mutual.
“Indications so far are that the industry fared fairly well,” Joyner said in an email. “It appears that we were right on the edge of what could have been a devastating event.”
Florida’s fruit and vegetable growers also reported no widespread damage to crops, though growers are still assessing the cold weather’s impact, said Christina Morton, director of communications for the Florida Fruit & Vegetable Association.
“Early reports are showing growers were pretty fortunate considering how cold it got and for how long it hung around,” Morton said in an email.
Over the weekend, parts of the Florida Panhandle had wind chills that dipped into the single digits, and interior parts of central Florida had temperatures plunging as low as 27 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 2.7 degrees Celsius). At Tampa International Airport, the thermometer dipped below freezing for the first time in almost five years.
Florida is the primary supplier of fresh fruits and vegetables for the rest of the country during the winter, and growers last week harvested as much of their crops as possible ahead of the Arctic blast. In the state’s midsection, where blueberries, strawberries and blackberries are grown, growers used overhead irrigation to spray a protective coat of ice around the fruit.
Florida agriculture already was battered this fall by two hurricanes — Ian and Nicole. Hurricane Ian hit citrus groves hard, as well as the state’s large cattle industry, dairy operations, vegetables like tomatoes and peppers, and even hundreds of thousands of bees essential to many growers.
Citrus is big business in Florida, with more than 375,000 acres (152,000 hectares) in the state devoted to oranges, grapefruit, tangerines and the like for an industry valued at more than $6 billion annually. Most Florida oranges are used to make juice, and this season’s drastically lower harvest, combined with the slam from Ian, will press prices upward and force producers to rely even more heavily on California and imported oranges from Latin America.
— Associated Press
RECOMMENDED ARTICLES
LAKE ALFRED, Fla. — University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences faculty have secured over $16 million in new funding to advance research projects to combat the deadly citrus greening disease that threatens the Florida citrus industry. The funding is awarded from the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture Emergency Citrus Disease […]
ZOLFO SPRINGS, Fla. (AP) — The thousands of oranges scattered on the ground by Hurricane Ian’s fierce winds like so many green and yellow marbles are only the start of the disaster for citrus grower Roy Petteway. The fruit strewn about his 100-acre (40-hectare) grove in central Florida since the storm swept through will mostly go […]
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Today, the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services denied AgLogic Chemical LLC’s state pesticide registration application for the pesticide aldicarb on citrus crops in the state of Florida. The pesticide registrant’s application failed to comply with requirements of federal law, specifically Section 7(a)(2) of 16 U.S.C. § 1536(a)(2), and therefore does […]
WASHINGTON — U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) employees in Zapata, Webb, Hidalgo, Willacy and Cameron Counties in Texas are working with the Texas Department of Agriculture (TDA) to inspect fruit trees in residential yards and commercial properties for signs of invasive citrus pests and diseases. Inspectors are hanging […]
COLLEGE STATION, Texas — Winter Storm Uri, which blasted through the entire state of Texas, caused at least $600 million in agricultural losses, according to preliminary data from Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service agricultural economists. “A large number of Texas farmers, ranchers and others involved in commercial agriculture and agricultural production were seriously affected by Winter […]
