Southern Freeze Might Put Heat on Food Prices : Living costs: The Gulf Coast cold snap has ravaged crops and increased fuel needs at the same time wells and refineries have succumbed to the weather.

The South’s rare white Christmas weekend, which brought subfreezing temperatures all along the Gulf Coast, will be felt by consumers across the country in the form of higher food prices early next year, farm experts predicted Tuesday.

The cold snap devastated the citrus crop in Florida and Texas, destroyed budding strawberries and wiped out whole fields of winter vegetables destined for East Coast supermarkets.

The freeze also created strong demand for fuel at the same time the cold weather shut down refineries and froze natural gas wells in the Gulf of Mexico, resulting in prices that shot up by record amounts.

On the other hand, Florida’s major industry--tourism--scarcely missed a beat, at least once jet liners were able to drop off vacationers at airports unequipped for snow removal.

Crop Damage

Along with higher food prices for shoppers early in the new year, there was fear, too, that the cold snap may have a more lasting effect on growers in both Texas and Florida, many of whom were hard hit by two other crop-destroying freezes in the past six years.

“This is the kind of freeze that puts people out of business,” observed Freddy Strano, who grows 2,000 acres of tomatoes near the Everglades.

In Texas, state agriculture officials estimated that 70% of the citrus crop and 80% of the winter vegetable crops were destroyed when temperatures plunged into the low 20s and upper teens Saturday and Sunday. Florida wrote off 40% of its $1.4-billion citrus crop, which fuels a juice industry that normally generates $3.5 billion a year for the state’s economy.

One immediate result was to delay the start of trading in orange juice futures at the New York Cotton Exchange, where the contracts are bought and sold. Trading limits were imposed, but Bill O’Neill, director of research for Elders Futures, said it was “impossible to tell” how high prices might soar. The most active January contract closed 16.10 cents a pound higher at 153.10 cents.

Also hard hit were unprotected fields of tomatoes, strawberries, eggplants, green peppers, sweet corn, lettuce and cucumbers, destined mainly for markets east of the Mississippi River. Major damage was reported to avocado, lime and mango crops. Florida horticulturists also reported heavy losses of ferns, which will mean a shortage of traditional greenery to accompany bouquets of roses next Valentine’s Day.

The freeze will impose a six-week delay in the flow of fresh strawberries to market that was to begin in January. Production gaps of varying length for the other crops will show up in supermarkets until replantings are ready for harvest in spring.

For citrus growers in both states, however, the true measure of the loss will not occur until next month when they will know whether their trees survived. Many hoped that colder-than-normal weather earlier had prepared the groves to withstand the below-freezing temperatures that left much of the South with its first white Christmas in decades.

“If the freeze damages just the oranges, there is a real chance to recover and produce another crop next year,” said Rick Bush, spokesman for the Florida Farm Bureau Federation. But previous freezes in 1983 and 1985 killed whole groves of orange and grapefruit trees, and some growers moved from central Florida farther south where their new groves were only now reaching full production.

Tuesday’s warming spelled more bad news, since ice-laced oranges can still be made into juice concentrate if they can be harvested before they rot. “Now we prefer that the temperature stay in the 40s and 50s for a month to allow us to get the fruit off the trees,” Bush said. “The longer it stays cool, the more that can be processed.”

Fruit growers in both Florida and Texas’ Rio Grande Valley said temperatures appear to be rising too fast to salvage much. The fresh-fruit market, which offers growers the best prices for their crop, is a total loss, they said.

Loss of winter fruits and vegetables from Florida and Texas will also cause some brief gaps in availability of fresh produce in the West, predicted Jan DeLyer of the Fresh Produce Council in Los Angeles. Eastern crops allow markets to maintain supplies until Mexico reaches peak production in mid-January, followed a few weeks later by California.

But reduced supplies from Florida and Texas will increase demand--and therefore prices--for California and Mexico produce, DeLyer said.

A U.S. Department of Agriculture official said orange juice price increases may be tempered by record stocks being exported by Brazil.

Energy Demand

Fuel-price shocks were exacerbated by fears of short supply in the wake of a Christmas Eve explosion at Exxon Corp.’s refinery at Baton Rouge, La., and smaller refinery fires elsewhere. January heating oil contracts spiked 10.74 cents above Friday’s level to close at 92.48 cents a gallon on the New York Mercantile Exchange, a record one-day movement.

Partly in sympathy, February contracts for West Texas Intermediate, the benchmark U.S. crude, rose 62 cents to close at $21.91 a barrel.

“The whole heating system is under pressure because this cold wave is so widespread,” said John Lichtblau, president of the industry-funded Petroleum Industry Research Foundation in New York. He said heating oil prices were les than 60 cents a gallon a month ago. Demand for distillates, including home heating oil and diesel fuel, was up 15% to 20% nationwide and as much as 25% to 30% on the East Coast.

Meanwhile, Exxon’s 450,000-barrel-a-day Baton Rouge refinery will remain shut down indefinitely after an explosion that killed one worker and burned storage tanks holding millions of gallons of heating oil and other fuels. A second Exxon refinery, in Baytown, Tex., slowed production because of unusual cold weather in the Houston area. A spokesman said enough heating oil remains in inventory and pipelines for Exxon to meet contracts at least through the first week of January.

A Phillips Petroleum Co. refinery in Sweeny, Tex., damaged by a fire Friday, will remain closed for at least a week. A fire also damaged an Amoco refinery in Casper, Wyo.

Elsewhere, the cold was wreaking havoc on Gulf Coast refineries. Marathon Oil Co.’s 250,000-barrel-a-day refinery in Garyville, La., was expected to remain closed for at least a few more days after equipment froze. Mobil Corp.’s 280,000-barrel-a-day refinery in Beaumont, Tex., similarly had a weekend shutdown because of the cold.

Heavy demand for natural gas along the frigid East Coast was squeezing supplies even in balmy Los Angeles. On Saturday, when Southern California Gas received about 60% of its normal supply, the utility alerted its nonresidential, industrial customers about a possible curtailment of supply, but that turned out to be unnecessary, said utility spokesman Ralph Cohen.

Federal officials met Saturday in Washington with about 80 state and industry representatives and agreed to waive certain rules to ease the transportation of home heating oil, natural gas and propane to hard-hit areas, said Mary Kayne Heinze of the Department of Energy.

Frozen Gulf of Mexico gas wells were expected to be back in operation now that gale-force winds have subsided and crews can get to offshore platforms to thaw equipment, said Mack Price, spokesman for Panhandle Eastern Corp. in Houston.

Tourism

The freeze did not affect Florida’s $20-billion tourism industry--mainly, said industry observers, because vacationers consider such weather aberrations as just that. Temperatures in the 70s and 80s are expected to return to Florida by this weekend.

Moreover, many vacationers make their plans far in advance, often purchasing airline tickets that are nonrefundable. In addition, Florida’s busiest vacation period doesn’t start until February, running into April.

“We have not seen any cancellations,” said Carlos Giraldo, general manager of the Central Reservation Service, a company that helps vacationers needing to find space in Florida. “In fact, there is a shortage of rooms, especially the two busiest destinations, Miami and Orlando, beginning Wednesday through New Year’s Day.”

Some people were prevented from getting to Florida and other destinations such as Charleston, S.C., and Savannah, Ga., because the airports there and in some other cities were closed for much of the Christmas weekend because they lacked equipment to remove snow.

Delta Air Lines was forced to cancel about 30 flights during the weekend. United Airlines reported a higher-than-normal number of “no-shows” for flights over the weekend. But only people with tickets having no restrictions were able to make such last-minute plans, and United’s advance bookings for the busy Florida tourist season are heavy, a spokesman said.

However, the closed airports may have increased business at some resorts. “We probably trapped more (travelers) than (those) we didn’t get,” said Jean McComb, director of communications for the Jacksonville Chamber of Commerce. Jacksonville is not a big destination point for Christmas weekend travelers. Moreover, the area had more sleet than it had in the last century, she added.

At Disney World in Orlando, the adverse weather conditions, especially the rain, slowed things down a bit on the two days before Christmas. But, according to spokesman Rod Madden, crowds on Christmas Day and Tuesday were “right on track.”

At the swank, five-star Ritz-Carlton in Naples, Fla., vacationers ventured out to the palm-encircled pool--but clad in warm-up suits and covered with blankets furnished by the staff. There, they sipped hot coffee. No one went swimming.

Times Staff Writers Patrick Lee in Los Angeles, Robert E. Dallos in New York and researcher Lisa Romaine in New York contributed to this story.