Florida’s Christmas Freeze Was a Gift to Brazil : Agriculture: The latest disaster for the U.S. citrus industry has helped cement the South American country’s status as the world’s juice maker.

Nothing has had more impact on the orange juice industry in Brazil than the Florida thermometer.

When it registered freezing temperatures in 1962, it made juice processors look south for oranges. They found Sao Paulo.

When it heralded another tree-killing freeze in 1977, it handed Brazil an estimated 50% of the U.S. juice market for the first time.

And when it brought four devastating freezes in the first five years of the 1980s, it symbolized Brazil’s permanent status as juice maker to the world.

Freezing temperatures over the Christmas weekend struck yet another blow to Florida’s citrus industry, destroying nearly 29% of the orange crop and cutting juice production by about 50%, officials with the Florida Agricultural Statistics Service announced Thursday in their first post-freeze crop report.

And Brazil has gained again.

“This freeze comes at a time when Brazil has a record crop,” said Ed Missiaen, an official with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Foreign Agriculture Service. “And we’re in the situation where we were in the early ‘80s. Brazil will have over half of our market again.”

Brazil’s juice exports are expected to increase as much as 36% worldwide, Brazilian diplomatic sources said Thursday, as the country moves into markets that belonged to Florida before temperatures plunged into the teens.

Damaged oranges still litter groves in north-central Florida, where they lie on a carpet of leaves that also fell victim to subfreezing temperatures nearly three weeks ago.

But the fallen leaves are a good sign, growers say, an indication that the trees survived the cold. The worst portent is a tree covered in burst bark and bristling with dead foliage. Such trees are a total loss, like an estimated 10% of Jim Simpson’s 600 acres in Mt. Dora, northwest of Orlando.

“The bark is mildewed underneath,” says Simpson, owner of Simpson Fruit Co. “You can scrape through the bark. It’s no longer green. It’s slick, slimy, with a black mildew to it.”

During the Christmas freeze--Florida’s ninth in the past 100 years--temperatures began to drop on Dec. 23. At 11 a.m., it was 32 degrees in Mt. Dora. Three hours later, Simpson’s thermometer was registering 28 degrees.

At 7 a.m. on Dec. 24, the temperature had plunged to 17 degrees. The low later that night was 22 degrees.

Agriculture experts say tree damage begins after only four hours of 28-degree temperatures. So Simpson spent the weekend monitoring the cold and trying to protect his livelihood.

“I spent two days without sleeping more than 45 minutes,” Simpson said. But he was luckier this time than in the 1985 freeze, when he was forced to bulldoze 85% of his trees because of cold damage.

Bob Hensel, who raises citrus, cattle and poultry, said his trees should be fine, but his 50-acre orange crop is a total loss.

“In Florida, the only way to go is diversify,” Hensel said, as he surveyed his ruined crop this week. “If you don’t, something like this will kill you, put you out of business.”

Brazil’s citrus industry had troubles of its own in the 1950s, when nearly all of its orange trees were destroyed by a virus called Tristeza.

When Florida fell victim to the 1962 freeze, replanting had just begun in Brazil.

“The 1962 freeze is really what sent the message to Brazil,” said Pat Cockrell, director of commodity activities for the Florida Farm Bureau Federation. “That’s what really got Brazil back onto the path to citrus.”

But the country’s processors did not do it alone. Multinational corporations began to invest in joint ventures with the Brazilians.

One notable example, Cockrell said, was an agreement between Sucocitrico Cutrale S.A. and Coca Cola’s Minute Maid division, whereby Minute Maid would buy whatever Cutrale could process.

By the time the 1977 freeze hit, Brazil was able to fill the void, shipping 64,000 metric tons of frozen concentrated orange juice to the United States, an incredible jump from the 2,000 metric tons exported a decade before.

“At that point, the Brazilian industry really took off,” said one Brazilian diplomatic source. “All of a sudden there was a huge potential market outside of Brazil.”

But until the 1980s, Brazil was still a secondary supplier, a kind of pantry-on-demand that U.S. processors could ignore in good times.

“Into 1980, we saw Brazil have excess frozen concentrated orange juice,” Cockrell said. “They were producing more than the market could absorb. But with our freezes, starting in 1981, the Brazilians moved from that secondary position to become a major supplier.”

And they plan to stay in that position. Between 1974 and 1989, the number of orange trees in Brazil more than doubled, from 68 million to 151 million. Projections for 1990 run as high as 18 million to 20 million new trees in the state of Sao Paolo.

During that same time, Florida’s total citrus acreage dropped from 860,000 to 700,000. Although current tree damage has yet to be assessed, the Christmas freeze will probably cause that figure to shrink yet again, Florida agriculture experts predict.

What they do know for certain, however, is that the state’s orange crop will probably drop 29%--from an estimated 130 million 90-pound boxes to about 92 million, state officials said Thursday.

In addition, the oranges that are salvaged will not yield as much juice as last year’s crop, also because of freeze damage. Juice production will probably drop 50%.

Immediately after the freeze in Florida and Texas, California fresh orange prices increased briefly, said Mike Henry, spokesman for the California Farm Bureau Federation in Sacramento. Retail prices jumped 5 to 10 cents a pound, but have since returned to normal. Juice prices in California were not affected.

“The full extent of the freeze damage on industry and the local economy will take some time to assess,” said Robert Behr, economic research director for the Florida Department of Citrus. “It will be months before we know the extent of tree damage and its impact on future production.”

For now, he said, Brazil will take over the market that Florida cannot supply. To Behr, that’s not entirely bad.

“That helps in the long term by keeping the market alive,” Behr said. “We see that, in some sense, as a valued availability of juice.”

AFTER THE FREEZE

Overall production

Citrus production, including oranges and grapefruit, expected to decline 25% from the 1988-89 season to 9.63 million tons.

Orange production expected to drop 24% this season to fewer than 158 million boxes.

Grapefruit output forecast at 45.6 million boxes, down 30% from last season.

Florida

Oranges: 92 million boxes, down from 146.6 million last season and 130 million estimated in December.

Grapefruit: 38 million boxes, down from 54.75 million last season and 44 million estimated in December.

Texas

Oranges: 1.25 million boxes, down from 1.85 million last year and 1.95 million estimated in December.

Grapefruit: 2 million boxes, down from 4.8 million last year and 4.4 million estimated in December.

U.S. Agriculture Department crop estimates