Some substantial and much-needed rain in the Rio Grande Valley have perked up the Texas citrus crop and has made for a busy first half of the season, said Trent Bishop, vice president of sales at Lone Star Citrus Growers in Mission, TX.

“It has been a good season for us in Texas so far,” Bishop said. “We’ve had some timely rains, the quality of the fruit is really nice, the support from the retail sector has been consistent, and we’ve been able to maintain a nice market.”

Trent Bishop, Jud Flowers and TJ Flowers of Lone Star Citrus Growers in Mission, TX at their booth at PMA in New Orleans. (Photo by Chip Carter)Lone Star’s “Texas Sweetie” orange and “Texas Red” grapefruit crops are “about at the halfway point right now,” Bishop said in mid-January. “We’ll have promotional volumes of grapefruit available through the first of April, and there isn’t a better time to promote Texas grapefruit than January 15 through March 15.  The taste is sure to drive repeat sales.”  

Oranges represent about a quarter of Lone Star’s overall crop. “That market is stable to strong right now and I don’t see anything in the near future that will cause that to change,” Bishop said.

In response to customer requests, Lone Star has added a new three-pound bag to its lineup and also gave its private label logos “a little facelift in the off-season,” Bishop said.

The most challenging part of the season for Lone Star has been coping with rainy days. With three significant rain events from September through early January, minor harvesting delays have been more common than normal this season.

“The rains have been welcomed, but this year we’ve had to remind ourselves what it is like to work around rain days,” Bishop said. “For the last several seasons we haven’t had to deal with too many rain-outs, and just in the first half of this season alone, there have been at least three rain events that have disrupted harvest three or four days at a time. Ultimately, these are good problems to have.  The alternative would be much worse.”

Even with the rainfall, “Our reservoirs are still in desperate need of replenishment. Most of the rain we’ve had this fall has been localized in the southern part of the Rio Grande Valley, whereas our reservoir watershed is up north and west of here,” Bishop said.

 “Water levels have gone up but not to match the amount of rainfall we’ve had here in the Valley. Long-term water needs are still of utmost importance to us.”

Now in its seventh season, Lone Star was founded by Bishop and partners Jed Flowers and TJ Flowers.  Lone Star farms its own groves and also works with other grower-partners. Aside from the groves that the company owns that are already in production, they have also stagger-planted each year with an eye on the future.  

“We will grow exponentially by the year as more and more groves come into production,” Bishop said. “Meanwhile we’ve also managed to forge expanded partnerships with some of our large, independent growers that will also increase volume.”

Lone Star Citrus is now fully PTI-compliant with item-level traceability via print-and-apply PLU labels with the company’s unique GTIN information.

Last year, Lone Star opened its facilities to outside cross-docking and cold storage and that business has grown as well.

“We are doing some off-season cold storage with one partner and it’s actually going to feed into a year-round program,” Bishop said. “That should lead to the potential of us being an attractive consolidation pick up point for our mutual customers to load in one spot. We have plenty of room to take on more cross-docking and cold storage business.”