Florida Orange Farmers Face New Blow With Dorian at Doorstep
On its current path, Dorian may batter at least a quarter of Florida’s main growing areas, said Drew Lerner.
(Bloomberg) -- Just when Florida citrus farmers thought they’d have a good season, in came Hurricane Dorian.
The storm is now expected to make landfall near Jupiter, Florida, as a Category 4, packing winds reaching 140 miles per hour at a time when citrus growers are still recovering from Hurricane Irma. Two years ago, that storm helped drop the number of oranges produced by the state to its lowest levels since 1945, causing billions of dollars in losses.
Dorian may batter at least a quarter of Florida’s main growing areas, said Drew Lerner, president of World Weather Inc. in Overland Park, Kansas. The knee-jerk reaction: Orange-juice futures surged to a 12-week high on concern groves in Florida will face damage similar to the devastation caused by Irma. The price, down 0.1% at 10:55 a.m. Friday in New York, is still on track for its biggest weekly rally in almost two years since Irma’s devastation.
“Certainly one has to be very nervous given the most recent path projection” for Dorian, said Ray Royce, executive director of the Highlands County Citrus Growers Association, which accounts for about 14% of the state’s production of oranges.
The state was showing potential for as many a 80 million boxes in 2019-20, according to Royce. Growers need every fruit they can get because prices paid per box will be lower this year, he said, as Florida’s farmers compete with Brazil’s bumper crop.
The industry has suffered from lower domestic consumption amid changing dietary preferences and surging competition from other beverages, including water. Also, greening disease has cut back on the amount of fruit available.
More recently, larger output from rival growers in Brazil and Mexico has spurred buyers to import more juice from those countries, keeping futures in New York under pressure. The combination has shrunk Florida’s citrus acreage, including oranges, to 430,601 in 2019, the lowest since 1966, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said Wednesday.
“Thirty to 50 miles deviation” in where the storm hits “can make a big difference” on the magnitude of damage, Royce said. “You can do some things in preparation,” he added, “but there’s really no way to protect the trees or the crop. We’ve seen that movie already a couple of years ago.”
Along with oranges, Florida is also key source of tomatoes, bell peppers, green beans, mushrooms, cucumbers, sugar and cotton in late fall and winter months.
During Irma’s passing, winter vegetable farmers appear to have been spared the full brunt of the storm’s potential impact. Only a small fraction of winter vegetable fields were planted when Hurricane Irma passed through major production regions in the south and central portions of the state, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said last year.
To contact the reporter on this story: Marvin G. Perez in New York at mperez71@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: James Attwood at jattwood3@bloomberg.net, Reg Gale, Joe Ryan
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