BONITA (Florida) DAILY NEWS

October 28, 2006

Growers hope to harvest a good recovery

By Laura Layden

Temple Citrus Grove opened for season this week and longtime customers started trickling in.

While Thursday's opening didn't seem so monumental, it was for the owners who a year ago weren't sure whether the nearly 40-year-old gift and produce stand off Airport-Pulling Road would make it through another season.

The grower took a hit from Hurricane Wilma, losing trees and fruit.

"We didn't have power," recalled Michelle McCauley, an owner and retail manager. "You can't do anything without power."

The business opened up on generators last season. Trees saw so much damage from Wilma that the owners had to ration fruit.

This season is looking much better than last for Temple Citrus and other area growers who survived the Category 3 storm, the first to directly hit Collier County in 45 years.

"We actually ran out of grapefruit last year," McCauley said. "But we are going to be OK this year."

Wilma walloped the region's growers, causing an estimated $2.2 billion in agricultural damage statewide. The timing couldn't have been much worse — the storm came right before harvest. The region's vegetable growers were among the hardest-hit. Some have since gone under, citing hurricane damage as a reason.

"Wilma hurt a lot of people," said Gene McAvoy, a regional vegetable agent with the Hendry County Extension Office in LaBelle.

TCB Farms, a greenhouse pepper grower near Immokalee, lost everything to Wilma and hasn't received any federal hurricane assistance because it can't qualify. The owners don't have the money to plant anything this year, and they may never plant again.

For Daniel Samet, a TCB owner, the lack of help has been frustrating.

"I'm still out of business," he said. "I realize that if I had been in Iraq, or any other country we throw money at, I would be back in business. But, shamefully, we don't take care of our own. My taxpaying money is not where it should be."

The grower may bring in partners as investors to try to get the farm going again.

At least five vegetable farming operations covering more than 2,500 acres in Collier, Lee and Hendry counties have called it quits or haven't replanted this season, in part because of hurricane damage. But most of those acres have been picked up by other commercial growers who have managed to stay in business, despite Wilma and many other challenges, from labor shortages to rising fuel costs.

In all, the region has lost about 1,000 acres of vegetable production since Wilma, McAvoy said. Fall plantings are somewhere around 25,000 acres and harvesting is slowly getting under way.

"It may turn out to be a pretty good season," McAvoy said. "But I hate to even say that, because I'll probably jinx someone."

El Nino has re-emerged this year and that should bring colder, wetter weather that could restrict vegetable supplies and lead to higher prices for growers across the state, he said.

A poor tomato crop in Mexico could also help boost prices for Florida tomato growers this season, McAvoy said. Mexican growers are struggling to combat a viral disease called yellow leaf curl, which seems to have taken them by surprise, he said.

At this time last year, Gargiulo Inc., one of Collier County's largest tomato growers, had virtually nothing left in the ground to harvest for the fall season. The storm destroyed both mature crops and the baby plants that had just been put in the ground.

"As of the afternoon of the storm, we were out of business," recalls Tim Nance, director of operations in the eastern United States for Gargiulo.

This fall is much different for the grower.

"Everything is looking pretty good," said Nance, adding that harvesting in his fields should begin by Nov. 1.

"Farmers are forever hopeful," he said. "We just hope we have a good crop."

Southwest Florida vegetable growers did get about 20 inches of rain with Tropical Storm Ernesto, which slowed plantings and spread disease when it pushed through South Florida in August.

But local growers still expect a much more normal year.

Statewide, vegetable growers should be in much better shape than they were last year.

"We're beginning to breathe a sigh of relief, hoping we're going to make it through fall for the first time in two years without a hurricane," said Reggie Brown, manager of the Florida Tomato Committee, which markets Florida tomatoes.

Florida's tomato crop shriveled to its smallest size in five years last season.

Tomato harvesting has begun in the Palmetto/Ruskin growing area and up in the Panhandle. Already, labor has been tight and that's one of the biggest concerns growers have going into this harvesting season.

With tightened security at the U.S.-Mexico border and immigration reform under debate in Congress, Florida growers expect a chill on the movement of workers.

"We hope the migrant workers will return," Nance said.

He said attitude more than anything could keep them away.

"They want to work in an area where they get a little respect and are not blamed for all the economic problems the country might have at the time," Nance said.

Fearing they won't get enough migrant workers to pick their crops this season, more growers plan to participate in a federal agricultural guest worker program known as H-2A, which provides temporary help from foreign countries at a greater cost. The program requires growers to provide housing for free to workers, and to cover the transportation costs to get them here and back home.

As far as pricing, it's too early to say what tomato growers can expect this season.

Prices for a 25-pound box of tomatoes have been in the range of $9 to $12 in recent weeks. A month ago, a box was bringing $25 to $30.

"Right now, prices are not terribly exciting," Brown said.

For the region's citrus growers, prices this season may be some of the highest they've seen in several years. That's because the state's orange crop is predicted to be the smallest in nearly two decades. A shorter supply usually results in higher prices for growers and consumers.

On Oct. 12, the U.S. Department of Agriculture released the first forecast for the season, predicting Florida growers would produce 135 million boxes of oranges, the smallest crop since the 1989-90 season, when trees were hit by a damaging freeze.

Last season, the state's growers produced 147.9 million boxes of oranges and 19.3 million boxes of grapefruit. This year, growers are expected to harvest 26 million boxes of grapefruit.

The smaller orange crop is blamed on cooler weather in February that damaged blooms before they could become fruit, along with hurricane damage and diseases, such as citrus canker and greening.

Mark Colbert, general manager for Duda Farm Fresh Foods' LaBelle grove, said trees continue to show stress from Wilma. Some are still on the ground, but they're alive, he said.

"Probably the biggest thing for us has not been the storm or development, it has been citrus canker," Colbert said.

In Hendry County, Duda Farm lost 2,300 bearing acres to the state's failed citrus canker program, which required growers to remove diseased trees and to destroy so-called exposed trees within a 1,900-foot radius.

Replacement trees will be hard to come by in the next two to three years as the nursery industry fights for a comeback from hurricanes that wiped out much of its stock.

"I won't even get trees until fall 2007," Colbert said. "So I'm looking at eight or nine or 10 years to get back to where I was before the citrus canker eradication program."

The grower did receive compensation from the U.S. Department of Agriculture for trees lost to canker.

"The USDA really came through like champs with a lot of money to get everybody paid off," Colbert said. "But if we could wave our magic wand, we wish we would have never heard of canker, and have all our trees, rather than an indemnity check."

While the outlook for juice oranges is good this season, fresh fruit growers face more challenges because the USDA and the Florida Department of Agriculture & Consumer Services have imposed restrictions on the movement of fruit from canker-infected groves.

The fruit can't be shipped anywhere in the U.S. or to the European Union and can only go to countries or markets where there's already canker, Colbert said. And the fruit and packing houses have to undergo more rigorous inspections since the canker program ended.

"We're doing the best we can and I think we'll do OK," Colbert said. "But we — us and the rest of the fresh fruit packers — are trying to learn to live with these new canker rules and regulations."

Like the larger commercial citrus growers, Temple Citrus in North Naples has seen its productivity cut by hurricane damage and cooler weather earlier this year. It too will have fewer oranges than it has in past years. But the grower will still have more fruit than last year.

The owners plan to keep prices the same this season, despite a shorter supply of oranges statewide.

McCauley said she's glad to welcome back customers for another season. Last season was one of the grove's toughest after Wilma knocked down so many trees.

"It was OK," she said. "We were glad to have survived. We weren't so sure in the beginning. It's because we have such great customers."