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The U.S. Department of Agriculture today trimmed its December orange crop forecast for Florida's 2008-2009 harvest season, reducing its earlier estimate by 1 million boxes to 165 million boxes. "Florida citrus growers need higher returns to handle increased production costs due, in part, to unprecedented disease pressures and high input prices," said
Mike Sparks, executive vice president and chief executive officer of Florida Citrus Mutual, said that "hopefully, the reduced crop will spur higher prices to growers."
The industry is sitting on large inventories of juice, "and we need to move some of that product out of the pipeline," Sparks said in a prepared statement. "Despite these and other challenges facing Florida citrus, I'm optimistic this is going to be a good year for growers."
The USDA maintained its prediction that 23 million boxes of grapefruit will be produced. A lower forecast for early and midseason varieties of oranges in Florida accounts for the estimate's decrease for December. The early and midseason crop is now projected at 87 million boxes, down from 88 million boxes, and Valencias, the late season orange crop, are projected to total 78 million boxes this season.
Each box of oranges is 90 pounds of fruit and each box of grapefruit is 85 pounds.
The first official forecast of each season is made in October and then revised monthly until the end of the season in July. Florida's citrus industry creates a $9.3 billion annual economic impact, employs nearly 76,000 people, and covers more than 576,000 acres, mostly in Central and South Florida. Citrus Mutual is the state's largest citrus grower trade group, founded in 1948 and currently represents nearly 8,000 grower members. The main office is in Lakeland.
The USDA's main Florida field office, which makes the citrus crop forecasts, is in Orlando, where agriculture statisticians using a combination of surveys, aerial reconnaissance, computer formulas and other techniques produce forecasts and production reports for numerous crops.
Source: orlandosentinel.com
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