Asian guava orchards can bring nine times the profit of mango and avocado, all staples of South Florida’s agricultural sector, a new University of Florida study shows.
But Edward “Gilly” Evans, a UF/IFAS associate professor of food and resource economics, cautioned that guava is a niche market that can easily be oversupplied.
“The fruit is not mainstream, so if everyone were to rush out and start producing it, prices would tumble,” said Evans, a faculty member at the UF/IFAS Tropical Research and Education Center in Homestead. “It also involves a lot of work, as each fruit has to be netted and bagged to avoid fruit fly damage or blemishes.
“The main consumers are Asian, in northern cities such as New York and Chicago. The fruit is not as popular elsewhere, even though it is very nutritious and has a lot of health benefits.
Guava contains several vitamins, including A, B2, C and E, along with calcium, copper, folate, iron, manganese, phosphorus and potassium, he said.
Evans led a study of costs and returns on a 5-acre guava orchard in Miami-Dade County. To get their cost and revenue figures, he and intern Stella Garcia interviewed farmers and Extension agents. Then they put the numbers through several economic calculations.
Although the cost to produce an acre of guava could be as high as $16,893 per acre, on average, revenue could be about $29,657 per acre — a profit of $12,764. On the sample 5-acre orchard, if all goes well, that’s an annual profit of $63,820. With guava, however, growers don’t see profits until two to three years after seeds are planted.
While researchers don’t know how many people are growing guava, acreage has gone up considerably in the last five years, Evans said.
