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Highlands Today

Last Orange Crop Was Bad, Next Year Projected To Be Better

File/Highlands Today

Expect to see more citrus trucks on US 27 next year. Experts predict 50 percent more oranges will be produced.

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By Gary Pinnell | Highlands Today

Published: September 27, 2007

SEBRING — The good news first: next year, a gallon of orange juice may cost less than a gallon of gasoline.

The bad news: during the 2005-06 season, Highlands County produced 19 million fewer boxes of oranges. Those are the latest numbers from the U.S. Agricultural Statistics Service, and they show the worst crop in 20 years.

"It was a short crop," admitted Wendell "Winkie" Williams, an Avon Park owner who also has groves in Lake Placid and Sebring. "We had a lot of things going on."

That's an understatement. The citrus tree census for the entire state hasn't been released yet, but preliminary figures show northern neighbor Polk County lost 5,400 trees. Collier, DeSoto, Hendry, Indian River, Lee and Martin counties lost 4.1 percent of their trees in one season.

The reasons: the loss of citrus lands to urbanization, disease and the outright abandonment of groves due to low prices in previous years.

Last year, Florida had 749,000 acres; and last year counted 621,000 acres.

"A significant portion of the loss in the last few years was due to canker," said Ray Royce, executive director of the Highlands County Citrus Growers Association Inc.

Entire groves were pushed over to combat the spread of the bacteria, which causes premature leaf and fruit drop. Lately, the Asian citrus psyllid, a tiny insect, has been infecting trees with greening.
"But," Royce pointed out, "those acreages may one day return to citrus."

The poor results of 2006-07 weren't uniform.

"My crop was actually not bad," said Williams. "I had quite a bit of young trees, which had better production. We had some isolated older blocks that were off."

The 2006-07 drought also caused fruit to be smaller, Royce said. The hurricanes caused the trees to produce fewer blooms.

"This is going to sound weird, but the tree made its decision about how much fruit to produce in fall of 2005," Royce said. At that time, trees were putting out new twigs and straining to replace the leaves blown off by winds.

Next Year

What will the 2007-08 crop look like? Two early estimates by private forecasters are 180 million and 198 million boxes of oranges. That's about 50 percent better than the crop which growers finished picking in July.

"My gut feeling is that I'm surprised at the 198 million figure," Royce said. He anticipated 155 to 170 million boxes. "I won't believe it until next season is over."

The bottom line, though, is that barring bad weather or another disaster, growers will pick more fruit next year than they did this year, and that usually means prices will fall, Royce said.

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