The Great (Citrus) Flood of ’93

In the citrus groves, they’re calling it “nature’s marketing order.” But you know they have to be wondering what would have happened if Southern California had not been hit by all this rain.

After a federal judge suspended the agreement allowing citrus growers to set weekly quotas on how many oranges and lemons could be sold each week, the produce industry waited for the flood of fruit that would surely swamp stores and send prices through the floor.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the broken bank. Southern California experienced its rainiest January in memory. Citrus groves were flooded, making harvest extremely difficult and reducing the amount of fruit on the market.

But rains never last forever, though federal rulings sometimes do. The bottom line is that even with the rain-diminished harvest, wholesale orange prices are down 25% to 30% from last year because of a bumper crop (forecast at nearly 2 1/2 times last year’s harvest).

Which, for consumers, means that the juiciest days are still to come.

* Apple prices, also much lower this year than last, thanks to a big harvest, have ticked upward with the release of apples from controlled-atmosphere storage. Apples from controlled atmosphere--rooms in which the ratio of oxygen, carbon dioxide and nitrogen are adjusted to extend shelf life--are considered to be of higher quality than fruit from normal cold storage.

The increase is most noticeable with Red Delicious apples. Granny Smith and Golden Delicious prices barely budged. In Washington, for example, Granny Smith inventories--the number of apples still in storage--totaled roughly 6 million boxes, compared to 3.6 million a year ago, and wholesale prices are down roughly 30%. Golden Delicious numbers weren’t quite so extreme: 12.2 million compared to 10.2 million last year, and a dip of only 15%.