Watermelon Profits Take a Soaking
By Robert Bowden, The Sun, Port Charlotte, Fla.
May 19–ARCADIA — Flooding rains in New England have driven prices down for watermelons being harvested in DeSoto and Charlotte counties now.
From a busy processing setup near the DeSoto-Charlotte county line, farmer Robbie Killmon explained.
“It’s a matter of supply and demand,” Killmon began. “And the rains and flooding have driven down demand. Before the rains, we were getting 18 to 20 cents a pound. Now it’s 15 to 16 cents a pound per hundred weight.”
It all adds up for K-Sweet Farms, an operation on 50 acres that father Tom Killmon has leased each year since 1959. The Killmons operate a second farm north of Arcadia, near Brownville, where they grow watermelons, eggplants, squash and peppers.
“This won’t be a bad year,” Robbie Killmon said. “Course, we had no good rains here for 55 days. That was just too dry. Now, with the rains up north, the prices are killing us.”
When rains and flooding keep people at home, they don’t shop, he noted. They aren’t thinking summer melon treats.
Killmon said the cost of growing and harvesting watermelons is about 13 cents per pound, so the profit margin this year is thinner than he’d like.
“Some farmers are holding them in their fields,” he added, in hopes prices will go up as Northern demand returns.
But not at K-Sweet.
Under mostly clear skies and with pleasant temperatures Wednesday, migrants worked in human chains to play toss-and-catch with the melons separated in 6-foot rows.
Some were loaded onto trucks. Some went into converted school buses, their tops removed to create a huge truck the workers call a “goat.” From the fields, the goats bounce their way down one-lane dirt paths to a processing line set up near busy U.S. 17, just south of the Wal-Mart Distribution Center.
The melons have to be unloaded by still more workers and tossed to other workers at the top of a conveyor belt assembly line. Workers along the line remove the melons and place them in cardboard boxes.
As the boxes fill, two forklifts race about, lifting boxes in stacks of three for placement in waiting tractor-trailer trucks.
“Watch out,” a man cried out as a stack of three boxes began to wobble atop a forklift moving on the muddy, uneven ground. In slow motion, the stack toppled, spilling fragile watermelons onto the ground.
The men rushed to recover unbroken melons.
The 50 acres were planted on Jan. 20, Killmon said.
“This time of year, we grow them in 100 to 105 days. In the fall, it only takes 65 days,” he said.
The area’s lack of rain forced Killmon to irrigate his fields, using well water to flood ditches spaced between planted rows. Drip irrigation used by some farmers didn’t work well this year, he said. The moisture apparently couldn’t reach the plants.
By farming standards, Killmon’s 50 acres at the county line is a small operation. On U.S. 17 near Fort Ogden, a much bigger processing facility — under a roof — works dawn to dusk moving melons from goats to tractor trailers.
The start of each season’s spring harvest is celebrated at the Arcadia Watermelon Festival, which was held two weekends ago.
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