Florida: Ag industry recovering after hurricane Charley 2004

A year after Hurricane Charley dealt a $200 million blow to Florida's citrus industry, the state's growers feel optimistic about the crop they'll harvest in the 2005-06 season. They continue to fight for a recovery.

As long as they don't take another hit from a hurricane, citrus growers should have more fruit than last year and they should continue getting a higher price for it, said Andy LaVigne, executive vice president of Lakeland-based Florida Citrus Mutual, one of the largest trade groups for growers in the state.

"If you look at the economics or the potential for this season they are pretty positive coming off last season," he said. "We were obviously able to reduce the reserve of juice, so that will help strengthen the price the growers will receive for their fruit."

Going into last season there was more than a 40-week supply of orange juice sitting in giant storage tanks across the state. That has dwindled because of las

Florida produced 149.6 million boxes of oranges last season, the smallest in 13 years, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Last year's hurricanes also wiped out two-thirds of the state's grapefruit crop, and now consumers are paying 50 percent more for a gallon of grapefruit juice.

Last August and September, four powerful hurricanes pounded the state's agriculture industry, causing an estimated $2.2 billion in farm losses. The citrus industry suffered some $500 million in damages. The storms pummeled trees and knocked fruit to the ground. Some groves in the state lost more than 90 percent of their fruit.

Many citrus growers have replanted and most packing houses and processing plants have rebuilt.

The Florida Citrus Commission has estimated next year's orange crop at 200 million 90-pound boxes, or 34 percent more than last year.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture won't release its first official estimate for the crop until October.

Harvesting begins in November.

"We're not sure how the hurricanes will affect this year's crop," said Richard Kinney, executive vice president of Florida Citrus Packers Inc., a trade association representing about 50 packing houses in the state. "Sometimes it takes a year or two before the trees recover. But we know there is fruit out there, certainly."

While growers expect a strong season, their optimism is tempered by concerns about canker, a highly contagious disease that blemishes fruit and causes fruit to drop off early. The state is battling one of the worst bouts of the disease it's seen in history. Growers wonder how many more trees they'll lose in the fight.

Last year's hurricanes are blamed for spreading the disease around the state. The dreaded disease has now reached 22 counties.

Since Charley, canker has appeared for the first time in a handful of counties, including St. Lucie and Indian River counties — the state's top two grapefruit producers. It has resurfaced in other counties, including Collier and Sarasota.

More than 6 million commercial trees have been destroyed in the state because of canker since the most recent outbreak was detected in 1995 near Miami International Airport. More trees are on the chopping block as the state continues its aggressive campaign to wipe out the disease. The state requires all infected trees and exposed trees within 1,900 feet to be chopped down.

"We continue to find one or two positive trees every couple of days and we're just hoping that the number of new finds is going to continue to drop off," said Denise Feiber, a spokeswoman for the Florida Division of Plant Industry, which oversees the state's canker program. "We are just hoping the big storm events stay away."

The state has stepped up its efforts to fight the disease in the last couple of months. The goal is to identify infected trees sooner and to destroy exposed trees more quickly.

The state has started a self-survey program for growers.

"We've trained over 2,000 grove workers, primarily managers or owners, to identify citrus canker symptoms and to conduct surveys in the interim period between our regular surveys," Feiber said. "That way we increase the number of surveys."

Though the self-survey program is voluntary, it may become mandatory, she said.

On another front, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has reassigned 112 inspectors that were randomly checking residential citrus trees for canker to conduct a 60-day comprehensive survey of commercial groves. Crews are looking at "high-risk citrus," and the survey is about halfway done, Feiber said.

The state also plans to hire contractors that can remove commercial trees faster. It's looking to destroy 500 to 600 acres a day in commercial groves.

Since Charley, Southern Gardens Citrus has seen canker hit two of its oldest and most productive groves between LaBelle and Clewiston. The trees were planted in the 1980s.

"These trees are in their prime right now, and we're having to (remove) hundreds of acres of trees, as many as 2,000 acres of 10- and 12-year-old Valencia trees," said Robert Coker, a vice president for Southern Gardens Citrus.

"This has been a very difficult time. But in order for us to be able to eradicate canker in Florida you have to push down infected or exposed trees, and we're pushing them down as fast as we can."

Coker anxiously awaits the end of this hurricane season. Hurricane season begins June 1 and ends Nov. 30. There has already been one severe hurricane, and forecasters say there could be nine more.Southern Gardens citrus is a subsidiary of U.S. Sugar Corp., headquartered in Clewiston. While Southern Gardens' citrus trees escaped harm from last year's hurricanes, the sugar crop wasn't as lucky.

"Our company has been in business since 1931, and we have never suffered the kind of economic damage that we suffered last year," Coker said. "We got pieces of three hurricanes in our sugar cane operations. We lost 25 percent of our production and that is literally tens of millions of dollars."

Sugar is a volume business, he explained. Though the company had a smaller sugar crop, the operational and maintenance costs remained the same.

Nursery growers were among the hardest hit in the state by last year's hurricanes, with $700 million in crop losses. The industry has also rebuilt, showing its resilience.

Though Charley wreaked havoc on Florida's tomato industry, growers were quick to replant. There were ups and downs last season, but it turned out to be one of the best years the state's tomato growers have seen in a while, said Reggie Brown, manager of the Florida Tomato Committee, which markets Florida tomatoes.

The state's tomato acreage should be about the same as last year, providing tens of thousands of jobs for migrant farmworkers returning to Florida this fall, he said.

Southwest Florida is often called the winter vegetable capital of the nation. Tomatoes are big business in the region. So is citrus.

Citrus growers say they also expect to have plenty of work this year with expectations of a larger crop. In Southwest Florida, the season is expected to be particularly good because the region's growers saw little damage from last year's storms.

"I think our area is going into the season stronger than any other part of the state," said Ron Hamel, executive vice president of the Gulf Citrus Growers Association, which represents growers in Collier, Lee, Charlotte, Hendry and Glades counties.

"I mean we've got a greater potential for our growers to have a more profitable season because fruit prices for all fruit, both fresh and on the processed side, is stronger than it's been for a while."

Agriculture jobs had been on the rise in Florida before Charley hit. But employment declined August to December.

In August 2004, 860 fewer people were working in agriculture in Florida than August a year earlier. Month-to-month comparisons continued to show declines. Jobs fell by 3,082 in September, 6,073 in October, 11,495 in November, and 6,781 in December, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Mike Wald, a regional economist for the bureau in Atlanta, said he attributes a portion of the job losses to the storms.

"There was definitely some impact there from the hurricanes," he said. "It was going up and up and then suddenly down."

David Lopez, human resources manager for Cooperative Producers Inc., an Immokalee-based citrus grower, said his company hired more workers last season because of a stronger demand for fresh fruit.

"We had to pick a lot of fresh fruit that couldn't be supplied by some of the growers that were hit by the hurricanes and when you pick fresh fruit you tend to do it slower than normal," he said. "It's not a volume pick. When it's for juice it's a volume pick. So you pick everything."

He expects his company to hire as many workers as it did last season because the demand for fresh fruit should be strong again this year, with east coast growers still trying to recover.

"Last season was a pretty good year," Lopez said. "Being in the area that was not hit by the hurricanes we were in pretty good shape. Our major concern is canker coming into the season. It was spread very much with the hurricanes and this year so far has been wetter than previous years with more thunderstorms and that helps the spread of canker."

The company's crew leaders have been trained to keep an eye out for canker, and they're training their workers to look for it.

"So far, so good," Lopez said.

But he knows that may not last long as the summer rains continue and the hurricane season kicks into high gear.

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