Last Tuesday, the new USDA 2017-18 citrus crop forecast reduced the projected Florida orange harvest to 46 million boxes; 4 million boxes fewer than its November estimate (-8 percent). This might help Florida citrus growers’ chances of getting federal assistance for Hurricane Irma damage.
The Ledger reported on the new estimate, saying how it held the 2017-18 grapefruit crop at 4.65 million boxes and reduced the expected tangerine and tangelo harvest by 40,000, or 4 percent, to 910,000 boxes.
In October, the initial USDA forecast put this season’s orange crop at 54 million boxes, which met with widespread scepticism from growers, who expected their Irma-damaged trees would continue to shed fruit. “This is exactly what we thought would happen as the true damage begins to rear its ugly head in the groves across Florida,” said Michael Sparks, CEO of Florida Citrus Mutual.
The damage to most Florida citrus groves comes in pre-harvest fruit drop. Irma’s winds instantly blew off a significant part of this season’s crop, and storm-related tree damage makes it even harder to hang onto the fruit that remained.
Pre-harvest drop had already reached historically high levels by the 2016-17 season because of the fatal bacterial disease citrus greening, which arose in Florida in 2005 and spread to virtually every grove in the next several years.
