Florida Orange Acreage Slumps to 24-Year Low as Farmers Cut Ailing Trees
Orange-crop acreage in Florida, the world’s second-biggest producer, fell to a 24-year low as growers removed trees to slow the spread of disease affecting citrus crops, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said.
The state has 483,418 acres of orange groves this year, down 1.8 percent from 492,529 acres in 2009, the USDA said today in a report on its Web site. That marked the smallest area since 1986 after several major freezes hurt groves.
“The citrus greening is still doing its dirty work,” Tom Spreen, a professor at the University of Florida’s Food and Resource Economics Department in Gainesville, said before the report. “The greening is really, really putting a damper on people planting new trees.”
Orange-juice futures have gained 22 percent this year on signs of increasing global demand and forecasts for a smaller crop in Brazil, the biggest producer.
The number of orange trees in Florida fell 1.9 percent to 63.8 million this year from 65 million in 2009, the USDA said. Citrus greening is a bacterial disease, spread by insects, that can kill orange trees. It was first found in Florida in 2005.
The acreage report is a “big deal because the number of trees in the ground estimates the amount of fruit that can be produced,” Spreen said.
Canker, Real Estate
Florida orange-grove acreage has been declining since at least 2000 because of citrus canker, another disease, and real- estate development.
The state’s orange production fell to a 17-year low of 129 million boxes in 2007 after storms in 2004 and 2005 damaged groves. Florida growers picked 133.6 million boxes this season, down 18 percent from the prior year, USDA data showed in July. A box weighs 90 pounds, or 41 kilograms.
Independent forecaster Elizabeth Steger in August projected Florida’s orange harvest will increase 15 percent, to 154 million boxes in the coming season.
“The number of fruit per tree is greater than last year, but the fruit size is smaller,” Steger said in an e-mail last week. She has been forecasting Florida’s orange crop since 1992 and her estimates are widely followed by the citrus industry.
The USDA on Oct. 8 will release its first official estimate for the harvest, which begins next month and runs through June.
Florida’s total citrus acreage, including grapefruit and specialty trees, fell 2.6 percent to 554,037 acres, the USDA said.
To contact the reporter on this story: Leslie Patton in Chicago at lpatton5@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Steve Stroth at sstroth@bloomberg.net.
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