Wisconsin and Florida-
By ANUK Staff
01/09/13
Citrus greening seems to be the cause of a decrease in Wisconsin navel orange supplies from Florida. The USDA's estimates of the 2012-2013 Florida citrus crop have dropped by more than 5 percent to 146 million boxes. A significant portion of the decrease has taken place in early-mid varieties which have declined 7 million boxes to 67 million from an initial October estimate by the USDA, according to a press release. Valencias took a hit decreasing from 1 million boxes to 79 million boxes.
According to the USDA, The Florida navel harvest is expected to be the smallest since the 1984-85 season.
“This decrease was not entirely unexpected as we have been hearing reports of severe fruit drop throughout the state,” said Michael W. Sparks, Executive VP/CEO of Florida Citrus Mutual, last month. “The dry weather coupled with intense disease pressure growers are facing is most likely causing the drop.”
Florida Honeybells are also in short supply this season as a result of citrus greening. The Tree-Ripe Citrus Co. of Johnson Creek was forced to tell their 43,000 customers in Wisconsin and Northeastern Illinois that it won’t be delivering any Florida citrus this month, including Honeybells and Grapefruit. The company had hardly any navel oranges to give their customers in December, according to the founder, Tom Paine, as reported in the Journal Sentinel.
"Everybody's being hit by (the citrus disease), whether they admit it or not," Paine said.
The business makes deliveries in Wisconsin as far north as Spooner and Hayward, sending a delivery schedule by email so customers can meet them in parking lots to buy fresh-picked fruit off the back of refrigerated trucks.
The business delivers to Wisconsin as far north as Spooner and Hayward, emailing delivery schedules to their customers so they can meet them in parking lots to buy fresh fruit off of refrigerated trucks.
"I've talked to other suppliers," Paine said, "and they say they can't produce enough, either. They're all in trouble."
According to the Tree Ripe alert on their website, the greening “has destroyed so much fruit that our supplier only can produce about 1/3 of what they had expected to, therefore they cannot supply us with the quantity needed to support our remaining scheduled visits.”
But the company does remain hopeful, and their site states, “We will continue our efforts to obtain some quality fruit, and if successful, we will make it available here on our website for home delivery.”
Florida Citrus
