County Could See Small Benefit From Florida Crop Damage

By Jim McLain, Ventura County Star, Calif.

Oct. 27–Hurricane-caused crop damage in Florida could benefit some Ventura County growers, but any sales increases probably will be small, officials said Wednesday.

Vegetable producers and a few citrus growers could sell some of their production to East Coast and Midwest buyers who normally are supplied with Florida-grown produce, but quantities are not likely to be substantial, said David Buettner, Ventura County’s chief deputy agricultural commissioner. Harvesting for most locally grown vegetable crops is completed, he said, while citrus grown here is earmarked for markets that Florida does not supply.

Florida agricultural officials Wednesday were still trying to determine how big a toll Hurricane Wilma took on the state’s crops, but they said the loss would be in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Fields of peppers and tomatoes were especially hard hit, they said, while some orange growers lost 15 percent of their crop.

Oxnard-area tomato grower Scott Deardorff said he expects harvesting of his 600-acre crop to continue through early December, but doubts he will see a repeat of last year when shipments to Florida’s tomato customers turned his season around. California growers had the tomato market pretty much to themselves last fall, but this year production is good in several growing areas, such as the South.

“The prices were so low in August we were dumping them, and because of the weather in Florida last year we had a good market at the end of the season,” Deardorff said. “Prices at the end of the season were probably 10 times what they were in August.” Sunkist Growers Inc., the giant citrus cooperative, expects any benefit from Florida growers’ problems to be slight, said spokeswoman Claire Smith. The Sunshine State produces only small quantities of lemons while its oranges and California’s target separate markets.

“Their crop, the bulk of it, goes to juice, so it really doesn’t have that much effect on the orange crop in California,” Smith said. “California’s crop is mostly sold on the fresh fruit market.” Generally, she said, oranges sold as fresh fruit fetch higher prices than those sold for juice.

Ventura County’s agricultural industry had $1.38 billion in sales last year, according to the Agricultural Commissioner’s office.

Tomatoes, with sales of $71.7 million were the area’s No. 6 crop while Valencia oranges ranked ninth with $20.5 million in sales.

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