California citrus devastated; avocados, strawberries also affected
California citrus devastated; avocados, strawberries also affected
Several successive nights of prolonged sub-freezing temperatures across much of California Jan. 10-14 have caused extensive damage to the state's Navel orange crop, which was already lighter than last year, and to other citrus varieties as well, with early estimates of losses in the range of 70-80 percent of the unharvested crop and dollar losses expected to top $750 million.
Avocados and strawberries were also affected by the freeze. Avocado shippers estimate that anywhere from 10-25 percent of the avocado crop may have been lost to the freeze. Damage to young bud wood may also affect next year's crop.
By contrast, the damage to strawberries, while extensive, will only have a short-term impact. While fruit already on the plants in colder areas will need to be stripped and discarded, and bloom drop will affect the next set of fruit, there was apparently little damage to the plants themselves, and they are expected to be back into normal production within two to four weeks.
The California citrus industry suffered a severe freeze in 1990 and again in 1998. The December 1998 freeze occurred over a three-day period and resulted in a crop loss of 85 percent, valued at approximately $700 million, according to a statement from the California Department of Food & Agriculture. The estimated value of citrus still on the trees in California's San Joaquin Valley, where a majority of the citrus is grown, was about $970 million prior to the freeze.
California Secretary of Food & Agriculture A.G. Kawamura visited citrus groves in the San Joaquin Valley Jan. 13 accompanied by several industry leaders to inspect the damage. California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger subsequently declared 10 counties in the central and southern part of the state disaster areas because of the crop losses.
"Freezing conditions continued throughout the citrus-growing regions of California for yet another night," declared a Jan. 15 written statement from California Citrus Mutual.
According to the statement, "the industry has sustained significant damage, but the full extent, in terms of total percentages and dollars, will not be evident for several weeks."
The industry had already spent nearly $85 million since November attempting to protect the crop from an inordinate number of nights of freezing temperatures, with wind machines and irrigation water the major defenses used. Wind machines can generally raise the temperature of a grove by two to four degrees. Citrus is not generally at risk until temperatures drop below 28 degrees for five hours, but on Saturday night, temperatures stayed at or below 25 degrees in many areas for nine hours or more.
It may not have been the coldest winter on record, but seldom have there been as many successive nights when the temperatures remained so low for so long a duration.
According to the CCM statement, "aside from continuing to protect the remaining crop, the industry is focusing its attention on consumers and making sure that the damaged fruit does not enter distribution channels. County agriculture commissioners in all counties where citrus is grown and/ or packed have requested that packers voluntarily hold [fruit harvested after Jan. 12] for five days in order to determine whether it is damaged." Anyone attempting to move damaged fruit "will be prosecuted. The California citrus industry is committed to doing whatever is necessary to continue delivering only high-quality citrus to the marketplace."
Mike Aiton of Sun World International, which grows citrus in the San Joaquin Valley and in the warmer desert areas of Southern California as well, told The Produce News Jan. 16, "We are not real optimistic right now. We are still trying to assess the damage, but the duration and the number of nights of cold weather ... really have dealt us a bad blow. I don't think that we are alone in that. Generally speaking, the California citrus crop has been decimated [and for] the rest of the season, I don't think there is going to be a lot of fruit available.
There were five nights "where the duration and depth of the temperature was just significant and very harmful," he said. "When it starts getting below freezing at 9 at night and doesn't warm up until 7 the next morning," and that continues for five or six nights, "it is very severe."
Sun World suffered losses in the desert as well as in the San Joaquin Valley. Temperatures there got into the low 20s, which is "almost unheard of," he said. "But we were fortunate down there because we were probably 90 percent of the way harvested with lemons and tangerines.
There may have been some tree damage also, Mr. Aiton said, but "it does not look at this time like there is going to be widespread tree damage."
Atomic Torosian of Crown Jewels Marketing said that he thinks that estimates of losses for the industry of between half and three-quarters of the crop are "realistic," although it will be a week or 10 days before "we really know where we are."
This is Crown Jewels' first season owning and operating its own packing plant, Kaweah Packing LLC in Lemon Cove, CA. It has turned out not to be the best year "to get into the citrus business on a large scale," Mr. Torosian remarked. Kaweah's crop was a little over 25 percent harvested before the freeze. "We had a long ways to go in the season for Navels." He estimated a loss of about 70 percent of what was left on the trees.
Specialty citrus crops as well as Navels were affected, as was next summer's Valencia crop, he said.
Crown Jewels also has strawberries in the Oxnard, CA, area that were affected by cold. "The production has dropped way down to almost nil, and we are going to see some gaps in our strawberry deal, he said. Fruit that was ready for harvest will be lost, and after temperatures warm up, "we are going to see how much bloom loss" has occurred, which could cause a gap two to four weeks down the road.
Carl Lindgren of Sunrise Growers in Anaheim, CA, said Jan. 17 that the long hours of temperatures as low as 27 degrees in Oxnard and in Orange County could cause a statewide drop in production of as much as 50-75 percent over the next four to five weeks. Some fields have been relatively untouched while others lost "every bit of fruit and flowers" on the plants, he said.
But the cold hasn't hurt the plants at all, he said, "and some people say that it will make for better fruit later in the season. ... A month from now, we'll be back at full speed."
According to the California Strawberry Commission, "the chilling temperatures haven't put a damper on California's year-round crop of strawberries, although the industry is experiencing a temporary setback that will take about six weeks to rebuild to normal volumes.
"It's winter and we expect bad weather," said Mark Murai, president of the commission. "Farmers recognize that when we get an extra chill, it's not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, it can be beneficial. It can stimulate production later and we could come up with a very good year."
January and February are the lowest producing months for California strawberries, according to the release. Unlike other fruits that have only one crop per year, strawberry plants continually produce fruit throughout the year and growers have only lost a portion of fruit currently on the plant. Although there has been some frost damage in the southern parts of the state, the plants are still in a very early stage. They will recover soon and produce flowers that will become the next set of fruit. Farmers are optimistic the volume of fruit will begin to return to normal production levels within a few weeks"
Cindy Jewell, director of marketing for Watsonville, CA-based California Giant Inc., said that the company's strawberry crop in Oxnard has sustained some damage from the cold but that it is "not much different than rain damage. ... We'll spend this week stripping off the damaged fruit and wait for the weather to improve," she said. "We'll lose maybe a week's production."
The hard part, Ms. Jewell said, is for buyers to get a handle on the loss in supply. "We had great weather in November and December, with great flavor and size," she said.
David Lawrence, owner of Santa Ynez, CA-based Red Blossom Farms Inc., said that strawberry damage varies on a "field-by-field basis" in places such as Irvine, CA, where Red Blossom's losses will amount to about 60 percent of the current crop on the plants, and in the Baja-San Diego area, where a freeze the night of Jan. 16 affected the crop.
"We were going to pick 6,000 to 7,000 trays today, but now its more like 1,000 boxes for the fresh market," Mr. Lawrence told The Produce News Jan. 17.
"This will affect Valentine's Day promotions, but later February and March should be good for promotions," Mr. Lawrence said, adding that retailers should be able to promote heavily for March and April.
In Santa Maria, where temperatures have dipped down into the teens, just about the entire current strawberry crop has been wiped out for Red Blossom, Mr. Lawrence said. Typically, that crop doesn't harvest until March, so there's plenty of time for it to recover.
According to the California Avocado Commission, the avocado industry was "hit hard by a cold arctic blast that caused significant damage" to the 2007 crop which, like the Navel orange crop, was already projected to be lighter than last year's huge harvest. "It will be several weeks before industry experts can determine how much fruit has been damaged by the cold weather, but early estimates suggest that losses could reach 10-20 percent" of the projected 400-million-pound crop that had just begun to be harvested.
The serious damage to some groves notwithstanding, "most of the state's 6,500 growers who farm 60,000 acres in California will be able to supply the market to meet consumer demand in 2007," according to a CAC press release.
"Commitments to retailers for the high-consumption Super Bowl weekend February 4-5 will be met, though consumer prices will likely rise," said Mark Affleck, president and chief executive officer of the commission.
"The [cold] weather was short term, but the ramifications [for avocados] are long term," Ross Wileman of Mission Produce told The Produce News Jan. 16.
"It got pretty cold in places" over the previous few days, he said. "In a lot of places, it was 22-23 degrees, but it was not the temperature but the duration which really affects the fruit. Everybody is trying to figure out where we stand." That will take two to four weeks, he said, "but just as a ballpark guess, I would say that we have lost probably at least 25 percent of the crop. It could be higher [industry wide] when all is said and done."
The industry has been meeting with state officials, discussing "the protocol for inspecting the fruit" to prevent passing freeze-damaged fruit "through the system to the consumer," Mr. Wileman said.
Chile, which is currently shipping avocados to the United States, "had basically planned to go through February," Mr. Wileman said. "Now with the California freeze, you may see some Chilean fruit coming into March." Mexico, which has a relatively large crop on the trees, will also "attempt to fill the void" left by the reduced California crop, he said.
Avi Crane of Prime Produce International in Orange, CA, believes that the amount of damage done to the avocado crop by the cold weather may not be as extensive as some think.
"I have a little different perspective," he said. "In the past," when there has been a freeze - which he said seems to occur, historically, about every seven to 10 years - it has "never resulted in the crop loss that we initially predicted. That is because our avocado industry is spread from the Mexican border up to San Luis Obispo County." So while there may be "pockets of cold air in many of the areas," it has never "hurt the majority of the trees.
"Based on what I have seen the past 30 years," Mr. Crane continued, "we will still have a plentiful supply of California avocados."
A freeze is "a disaster, obviously, for the grower that suffered major damage in his grove," he said. "But the avocado industry as a whole will get through this and have enough fruit to supply the retail and foodservice trades."
Avocados and strawberries were also affected by the freeze. Avocado shippers estimate that anywhere from 10-25 percent of the avocado crop may have been lost to the freeze. Damage to young bud wood may also affect next year's crop.
By contrast, the damage to strawberries, while extensive, will only have a short-term impact. While fruit already on the plants in colder areas will need to be stripped and discarded, and bloom drop will affect the next set of fruit, there was apparently little damage to the plants themselves, and they are expected to be back into normal production within two to four weeks.
The California citrus industry suffered a severe freeze in 1990 and again in 1998. The December 1998 freeze occurred over a three-day period and resulted in a crop loss of 85 percent, valued at approximately $700 million, according to a statement from the California Department of Food & Agriculture. The estimated value of citrus still on the trees in California's San Joaquin Valley, where a majority of the citrus is grown, was about $970 million prior to the freeze.
California Secretary of Food & Agriculture A.G. Kawamura visited citrus groves in the San Joaquin Valley Jan. 13 accompanied by several industry leaders to inspect the damage. California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger subsequently declared 10 counties in the central and southern part of the state disaster areas because of the crop losses.
"Freezing conditions continued throughout the citrus-growing regions of California for yet another night," declared a Jan. 15 written statement from California Citrus Mutual.
According to the statement, "the industry has sustained significant damage, but the full extent, in terms of total percentages and dollars, will not be evident for several weeks."
The industry had already spent nearly $85 million since November attempting to protect the crop from an inordinate number of nights of freezing temperatures, with wind machines and irrigation water the major defenses used. Wind machines can generally raise the temperature of a grove by two to four degrees. Citrus is not generally at risk until temperatures drop below 28 degrees for five hours, but on Saturday night, temperatures stayed at or below 25 degrees in many areas for nine hours or more.
It may not have been the coldest winter on record, but seldom have there been as many successive nights when the temperatures remained so low for so long a duration.
According to the CCM statement, "aside from continuing to protect the remaining crop, the industry is focusing its attention on consumers and making sure that the damaged fruit does not enter distribution channels. County agriculture commissioners in all counties where citrus is grown and/ or packed have requested that packers voluntarily hold [fruit harvested after Jan. 12] for five days in order to determine whether it is damaged." Anyone attempting to move damaged fruit "will be prosecuted. The California citrus industry is committed to doing whatever is necessary to continue delivering only high-quality citrus to the marketplace."
Mike Aiton of Sun World International, which grows citrus in the San Joaquin Valley and in the warmer desert areas of Southern California as well, told The Produce News Jan. 16, "We are not real optimistic right now. We are still trying to assess the damage, but the duration and the number of nights of cold weather ... really have dealt us a bad blow. I don't think that we are alone in that. Generally speaking, the California citrus crop has been decimated [and for] the rest of the season, I don't think there is going to be a lot of fruit available.
There were five nights "where the duration and depth of the temperature was just significant and very harmful," he said. "When it starts getting below freezing at 9 at night and doesn't warm up until 7 the next morning," and that continues for five or six nights, "it is very severe."
Sun World suffered losses in the desert as well as in the San Joaquin Valley. Temperatures there got into the low 20s, which is "almost unheard of," he said. "But we were fortunate down there because we were probably 90 percent of the way harvested with lemons and tangerines.
There may have been some tree damage also, Mr. Aiton said, but "it does not look at this time like there is going to be widespread tree damage."
Atomic Torosian of Crown Jewels Marketing said that he thinks that estimates of losses for the industry of between half and three-quarters of the crop are "realistic," although it will be a week or 10 days before "we really know where we are."
This is Crown Jewels' first season owning and operating its own packing plant, Kaweah Packing LLC in Lemon Cove, CA. It has turned out not to be the best year "to get into the citrus business on a large scale," Mr. Torosian remarked. Kaweah's crop was a little over 25 percent harvested before the freeze. "We had a long ways to go in the season for Navels." He estimated a loss of about 70 percent of what was left on the trees.
Specialty citrus crops as well as Navels were affected, as was next summer's Valencia crop, he said.
Crown Jewels also has strawberries in the Oxnard, CA, area that were affected by cold. "The production has dropped way down to almost nil, and we are going to see some gaps in our strawberry deal, he said. Fruit that was ready for harvest will be lost, and after temperatures warm up, "we are going to see how much bloom loss" has occurred, which could cause a gap two to four weeks down the road.
Carl Lindgren of Sunrise Growers in Anaheim, CA, said Jan. 17 that the long hours of temperatures as low as 27 degrees in Oxnard and in Orange County could cause a statewide drop in production of as much as 50-75 percent over the next four to five weeks. Some fields have been relatively untouched while others lost "every bit of fruit and flowers" on the plants, he said.
But the cold hasn't hurt the plants at all, he said, "and some people say that it will make for better fruit later in the season. ... A month from now, we'll be back at full speed."
According to the California Strawberry Commission, "the chilling temperatures haven't put a damper on California's year-round crop of strawberries, although the industry is experiencing a temporary setback that will take about six weeks to rebuild to normal volumes.
"It's winter and we expect bad weather," said Mark Murai, president of the commission. "Farmers recognize that when we get an extra chill, it's not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, it can be beneficial. It can stimulate production later and we could come up with a very good year."
January and February are the lowest producing months for California strawberries, according to the release. Unlike other fruits that have only one crop per year, strawberry plants continually produce fruit throughout the year and growers have only lost a portion of fruit currently on the plant. Although there has been some frost damage in the southern parts of the state, the plants are still in a very early stage. They will recover soon and produce flowers that will become the next set of fruit. Farmers are optimistic the volume of fruit will begin to return to normal production levels within a few weeks"
Cindy Jewell, director of marketing for Watsonville, CA-based California Giant Inc., said that the company's strawberry crop in Oxnard has sustained some damage from the cold but that it is "not much different than rain damage. ... We'll spend this week stripping off the damaged fruit and wait for the weather to improve," she said. "We'll lose maybe a week's production."
The hard part, Ms. Jewell said, is for buyers to get a handle on the loss in supply. "We had great weather in November and December, with great flavor and size," she said.
David Lawrence, owner of Santa Ynez, CA-based Red Blossom Farms Inc., said that strawberry damage varies on a "field-by-field basis" in places such as Irvine, CA, where Red Blossom's losses will amount to about 60 percent of the current crop on the plants, and in the Baja-San Diego area, where a freeze the night of Jan. 16 affected the crop.
"We were going to pick 6,000 to 7,000 trays today, but now its more like 1,000 boxes for the fresh market," Mr. Lawrence told The Produce News Jan. 17.
"This will affect Valentine's Day promotions, but later February and March should be good for promotions," Mr. Lawrence said, adding that retailers should be able to promote heavily for March and April.
In Santa Maria, where temperatures have dipped down into the teens, just about the entire current strawberry crop has been wiped out for Red Blossom, Mr. Lawrence said. Typically, that crop doesn't harvest until March, so there's plenty of time for it to recover.
According to the California Avocado Commission, the avocado industry was "hit hard by a cold arctic blast that caused significant damage" to the 2007 crop which, like the Navel orange crop, was already projected to be lighter than last year's huge harvest. "It will be several weeks before industry experts can determine how much fruit has been damaged by the cold weather, but early estimates suggest that losses could reach 10-20 percent" of the projected 400-million-pound crop that had just begun to be harvested.
The serious damage to some groves notwithstanding, "most of the state's 6,500 growers who farm 60,000 acres in California will be able to supply the market to meet consumer demand in 2007," according to a CAC press release.
"Commitments to retailers for the high-consumption Super Bowl weekend February 4-5 will be met, though consumer prices will likely rise," said Mark Affleck, president and chief executive officer of the commission.
"The [cold] weather was short term, but the ramifications [for avocados] are long term," Ross Wileman of Mission Produce told The Produce News Jan. 16.
"It got pretty cold in places" over the previous few days, he said. "In a lot of places, it was 22-23 degrees, but it was not the temperature but the duration which really affects the fruit. Everybody is trying to figure out where we stand." That will take two to four weeks, he said, "but just as a ballpark guess, I would say that we have lost probably at least 25 percent of the crop. It could be higher [industry wide] when all is said and done."
The industry has been meeting with state officials, discussing "the protocol for inspecting the fruit" to prevent passing freeze-damaged fruit "through the system to the consumer," Mr. Wileman said.
Chile, which is currently shipping avocados to the United States, "had basically planned to go through February," Mr. Wileman said. "Now with the California freeze, you may see some Chilean fruit coming into March." Mexico, which has a relatively large crop on the trees, will also "attempt to fill the void" left by the reduced California crop, he said.
Avi Crane of Prime Produce International in Orange, CA, believes that the amount of damage done to the avocado crop by the cold weather may not be as extensive as some think.
"I have a little different perspective," he said. "In the past," when there has been a freeze - which he said seems to occur, historically, about every seven to 10 years - it has "never resulted in the crop loss that we initially predicted. That is because our avocado industry is spread from the Mexican border up to San Luis Obispo County." So while there may be "pockets of cold air in many of the areas," it has never "hurt the majority of the trees.
"Based on what I have seen the past 30 years," Mr. Crane continued, "we will still have a plentiful supply of California avocados."
A freeze is "a disaster, obviously, for the grower that suffered major damage in his grove," he said. "But the avocado industry as a whole will get through this and have enough fruit to supply the retail and foodservice trades."
