By Thursday, the continued decline of Florida’s commercial citrus industry, as reported by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, surprised nobody.
Total citrus acreage continued its 19-year decline with another 3 percent fall in grove land to 501,396 acres compared to 515,147 acres last year. Those groves also had 2 percent fewer trees since 2014 with a total of 66.9 million trees, down from 68.1 million trees a year ago.
“These are the lowest numbers in the series across the board,” said Candi Erick, administrator at the USDA’s Florida Field Office in Maitland, which oversees the annual citrus census.
Erick was referring to the 49-year census series back to 1966, when the USDA began its current aerial survey method. USDA officials met with a growers’ advisory board at the Florida’s Natural Growers Grove House.
The new survey showed 12,343 acres of new citrus grove planted over the year, the highest total since 2009, but the increase was not enough to overcome the loss of 26,094 grove acres since 2014, she said. On the bright side, Erick said, most of the acreage removed was probably abandoned or marginally productive groves.
Of greater concern to growers is the decline in the value of the citrus crop.
The USDA reported the preliminary on-tree value of the 2014-15 Florida citrus crop at $1 billion, a 12 percent decline from a revised value of nearly $1.2 billion in the 2013-14 crop. A year ago, USDA had valued the 2013-14 crop at $946.5 million.
Because of rising costs and declining value, the 2014-15 season was a tough one economically for most growers, said Larry Black, a Fort Meade-based grower and president of Lakeland-based Florida Citrus Mutual, the state’s largest growers’ trade group. Grove caretaking costs have risen to about $2,200 per acre, triple the costs just 15 years ago.
