Demand for OJ is down. So are prices, again. For growers waiting it out, it's ...
By LETITIA STEIN
Published March 5, 2004
LITHIA - Paul Harris sees his future in the potted plants creeping over acres once lush with ripening oranges. For now.
These days, his cash crop is the budding citrus tree he sells in a plastic pot. The plants are destined for subdivisions growing where other citrus farmers have sold out.
Like many, his groves have not made money in years.
"Back 30 to 40 years ago, a farmer with 2 acres could put his four kids through college," said Harris, whose farm spreads across 120 acres in Hillsborough and Polk counties. "A guy with 400 acres today, he could put one kid into a welfare program."
And this year looks worse than the last.
Mother Nature and the late Dr. Robert Atkins are peeling back prices for the state's signature crop. As carb-crazed Americans cut fruit juice from their daily diets, Florida farmers are harvesting smaller oranges. Ordinarily, a smaller crop would whittle profits. This year, it may be a blessing in disguise.
This year's price - 55 cents per pound of juice and pulp for early to midseason oranges - marks the fourth consecutive year of low prices. Consumption has dropped 5 percent in three years, according to the Florida Department of Citrus.
"It's kind of just bad," said Robert Barber, an economist with Citrus Mutual in Lakeland, the state's largest growing organization. Experts say 90,000 jobs flow from the state's citrus industry, which had an estimated economic impact of $9-billion during 1999-2000.
They count the fruit
Monitoring an orange harvest is a science of sorts, cobbled together over decades.
Twenty citrus road maps cover the state. At each, inspectors with the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Sciences collect data that help forecast the crop.
In Hillsborough County, Route Eight winds from Interstate 4 to Sydney Road.
Bill Curtis, a mathematician with the Department of Agriculture, stopped in January at farm 17-30-1955 - 17 rows of Valencia orange trees planted in 1955.
Curtis' log book dates to October, when small fruits were forming on the branches. The monthly visits will continue until the final oranges have been picked in June.
Yellow ribbons tell inspectors which trees and branches to inspect. Curtis begins by counting the pieces of fruit growing on a sample branch.
"One, two, three, four, five, six . . . " He counts twice. Low-hanging fruit is easy to miss. The branch has dropped one orange since the previous count, a log shows. That's expected.
Curtis holds up a red tool called a sizer - a salad tong threaded with measuring tape.
He wraps the tape around the orange. Each month, field inspectors measure a few branches on sample trees to project the crop size and record the figure into a tape recorder. In Orlando, a computer analyzes this information to help predict the size of the current crop, based on historic averages.
The characteristics of this year's crop took shape last spring, when powdery blossoms blanketed groves like snow. So much bloom - as farmers call the fragrant white flowers - came with a cost. With a lot of fruit on the trees, the oranges did not grow as large as they did last year.
"Average is about baseball size," explains Bob Terry, a statistician with the Agriculture Department. The difference was small - less than the gap between a softball and a baseball. Still, it reduced forecasts by 6-million boxes.
Now at the midpoint in the orange season, however, state officials still predict a historic crop of 246-million boxes, surpassing the record 244-million boxes picked in 1997-98. Size matters most for farmers growing for grocery stores - not at the juicing plants, where most Florida oranges end up. Less produce usually means less money.
"In the longer run, every little bit helps," said Barber, the economist with Citrus Mutual. But this year, demand was so low that a smaller crop matters little. Farmers simply have less to sell in a difficult market.
"We're not going to be able to sell all of it this year, so a lot of it is going to go into storage," Barber said.
40-million gallons less
Florida grows about 80 percent of oranges raised in the United States. Most Florida oranges are pressed for juice. About eight in 10 American households drink orange juice.
The problem? OJ's biggest fans are cutting back.
In 2001, about 21 percent of the households buying orange juice were what industry experts call heavy users; they consumed more than 12 gallons during the year. By 2003, the ranks of heavy users had dropped to 19 percent - enough to make a dent in demand. National retail sales fell 40-million gallons during the past three fiscal years.
The Department of Citrus recently surveyed 66,000 households known to have reduced or cut orange juice consumption. Many did so unconsciously. But of those who thought out their decisions, about one in three cited diets, or eating smarter, as the reason.
To fight the trend, the Citrus Department is rolling out a $6-million marketing campaign to promote the healthiness of orange juice.
"It's a good-for-you product," said Dan Gunter, a business consultant for the department. "If consumers are interested in finding out more about it, that should help the industry with the sales problem right now."
Such efforts may come too late to boost demand for this year's harvest. While large groves have contracts with juice processors to ride out a difficult season, smaller farms hurt the most when prices fall.
Around the Brandon area, some citrus farmers are cutting their losses.
"We tore out the trees and planted houses," said Jim Powell, general partner of the Mulrennan family farm, which once owned almost 400 acres in southern Hillsborough.
In recent years, the family watched the value of fruit sink, while land prices climbed. In December, the Mulrennans sold the final parcel in Valrico for $25,000 per acre.
Now Mulrennan Groves is the name of a Valrico subdivision. Nearby, boxy two-story homes rise on land that once grew navel oranges. Bud Mulrennan, who farmed the family groves for decades, drove through the neighborhood and saw the future of the local citrus industry.
"This is the end of it in here," he said. "I know it."
In Lithia, Paul Harris would not deny the prophecy. But he is holding out.
"Right now, citrus people on paved roads are selling to subdivisions," he said, brushing off questions about his future. "I'm still saying I can make it to tomorrow."
- Letitia Stein can be reached at 661-2443 or lstein@sptimes.com[Last modified March 4, 2004, 13:42:37]
