Florida to Halt Sale of Fresh Citrus for Week
In the wake of a record freeze that damaged much of its crop, Florida decided Thursday to impose a weeklong embargo on the sale and shipment of fresh citrus, beginning next Monday. The move is expected to boost already buoyed prices for fresh California oranges, which rose $1 per 38-pound box this week.
Spokesmen for the California citrus industry stressed, however, that no shortage appears likely at this point, with about two-thirds of the state’s navel crop still awaiting harvest.
The Florida embargo followed three nights of freezing weather in all of the state’s growing districts, making the freeze the most pervasive in Florida history.
The December, 1983, freeze, described at the time as a once-in-a-century phenomenon, destroyed or damaged about one-fourth of the state’s 800,000 citrus acres, but most of that damage was in the northern growing districts.
Plants Run Day and Night
Meanwhile, mild temperatures warmed the state Thursday as pickers rushed to rescue what they could before spoilage. Processing plants were “running around the clock in an effort to get all the damaged fruit in before they start dehydrating and we lose the juice,” said Ernie Neff, spokesman for the Florida Citrus Mutual, the state’s largest growers organization.
“The embargo is needed . . . to sort out the good from the bad,” Peter Knight, director of the Florida Fruit and Vegetable Inspection Service, told the Florida Citrus Commission, which voted to impose the embargo.
Citrus growers in California and Brazil are expected to benefit from Florida’s freeze. Sales of fresh California oranges have already increased on the East Coast, and Brazilian growers see a chance to fatten profits from juice exports.
Brazil suspended citrus exports Tuesday to review inventories and negotiate new contracts.
Ninety percent of Florida’s oranges are turned into juice. Buyers of the remaining 10%, sold as fresh fruit, are turning to California, where navel oranges are now being harvested, said Joel Nelson, president of California Citrus Mutual.
“So we pick like mad and ship like mad,” Nelson told Associated Press.
Vegetable Prices Rise
The result has been a further boost in California orange prices. Oranges that sold for as little as $6.25 a box last year at this time now fetch up to $11 a box, said Jim Balladaras of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s agricultural marketing service in Los Angeles.
About $1 of that increase came on Wednesday, Balladaras said in an interview, and the price remained firm Thursday.
On the other hand, agriculture officials said, it is still too early to tell what effect, if any, Florida’s freeze will have here on the price of winter vegetables. The effect has been pronounced in Florida, where prices increased for beans, strawberries, cabbages, peppers, yellow squash and tomatoes.
Celery prices in California were reported higher--between $5 and $6 per 2 1/2-dozen, up from about $4--but that market has been depressed by oversupply and the increase barely covers growers’ costs, Balladaras said.
California orange-marketing efforts opened more strongly this season than last, benefiting from a smaller crop of generally better-quality fruit than last year’s. The supply was reduced further by the virtual absence of last season’s Florida crop and by the quarantine that state imposed on citrus shipments last fall after an outbreak of deadly citrus canker, which has triggered the destruction of millions of trees.
To the extent that this week’s wholesale prices stemmed from Florida’s woes, however, it represented more a psychological response, “a knee-jerk reaction,” to the news from Florida, rather than to any shortage of produce, said Mike Stewart of Irvine-based Western Growers Assn. The weeklong embargo could trigger further “panic buying,” suggested Bill Martinet of Encino-based Sunkist Growers Inc.
