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Highlands Today

2008 Crop Should Be 30% Better Than Last Year

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By Gary Pinnell | Highlands Today

Published: October 13, 2007

SEBRING — Here's the upshot from Friday morning's citrus crop estimate: USDA experts don't expect a repeat of the 230 million box bumper crop of the 2001-02 season. But unless there's a disaster, 2007-08 will be way better than the 129 million boxes Florida farmers eked out last season.

"We're excited to see the estimate of 168 million boxes this season," said Michael W. Sparks, executive vice president of Florida Citrus Mutual, a grower's association.

Raymond Royce, executive director of the Highlands County Citrus Growers Association, thinks the agriculture department's prediction of 30 percent larger than last year is neither too positive or too negative.

"It's right about where I believe, and many of our growers probably thought we would be," Royce said.

Private estimates had come in as high as 198 million.

"We were all really surprised when Elizabeth Steger came out at 198 million," Royce said. "But don't get me wrong. She has proven to be relatively accurate." Steger, the president of a consulting citrus company in Kissimmee, releases her own estimates.

The USDA estimate will be constantly revised, as more data comes in, and it could drift more to Steger's estimate, he guessed.

Commodity traders buy on rumors and sell on news, so orange juice futures fell a few months ago when a larger crop was predicted. On Thursday, before the USDA estimate was released, the Dow Jones Newswire reported "frozen concentrated orange juice futures fell sharply on speculative selling as traders took profits ... ahead of the government's 2007-08 Florida orange crop estimate due Friday morning. November juice on

ICE Futures U.S. fell 515 points to settle at $1.3630 a pound, and January fell 455 points to $1.3655."

Finally, here's the bottom line for orange juice consumers: since the 2007-08 orange supply will be somewhat greater, Royce believes a gallon of juice should cost about the same next year as this year, or slightly less.

USDA RECAP BY VARIETY

Early, mid and navel oranges – 81 million boxes, up 23 percent from 2006-07.

Valencias – 87 million boxes, up 37 percent from last year.

Grapefruit – 25 million boxes – down 2.2 million boxes from last year.

Tangelos – 1.3 million boxes, about the same as last year.

Tangerines – 5.3 million boxes, up about 700,000 boxes from last year.

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