Storms follow bugs to Florida creating havoc as orange crop slumps
NEW YORK: After a disease-spreading bug wreaked havoc on Florida citrus groves this year, growers like Maury Boyd are seeing a new threat from the weatherman that would mean “pure hell” for orange-juice supplies.
As many as six hurricanes are forecast to develop in the Atlantic from now until November, increasing the risk of losses to Florida’s 2015 harvest, after citrus greening disease made this year’s orange crop the smallest in 29 years. Florida is the world’s largest grower after Brazil and the target for more hurricanes than any other US state over the past century.
While Americans have been drinking less orange juice since the 1990s, a faster drop in supply has kept prices high as disease spread among Florida groves in the past decade. Futures are up 34 per cent since October and may jump 23 per cent further by yearend to US$ 2.0175 a pound, a Bloomberg survey of analysts showed. Tight supplies will boost costs for buyers including Coca- Cola’s Minute Maid and Pepsico’s Tropicana.
“This can be depressing,” said Boyd, 69, who expects a 20 per cent drop in output this year on the 1,500 acres of groves his family has farmed for a century. “The disease is throwing curves at us all the time. If we have a major weather event, that’s going to become the perfect storm, just pure hell.”
As many as 13 named storm systems may develop from June 1 to Nov 30 in the Atlantic, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration forecasts. The bulk of the orange crop in Florida is harvested from October to June. From 1900 to 2010, south- east Florida was hit at least 30 times by major storms, or more than one every four years on average, compared with 20 for Louisiana, according to MDA Information Systems Inc.
The US hasn’t been struck by a major hurricane with winds of 111 miles per hour or more since Wilma crashed into Florida in 2005, the longest such period in modern records. Prices will be “supported pretty well by the lack of incremental supply and the weather risk,” said Peter Sorrentino, who helps manage US$ 3.8 billion at Huntington Asset Advisors in Cincinnati.
Even though this season’s storm forecast is below the 10year average of 16 storms, 1992’s Hurricane Andrew “caused significant damage to southern areas of the citrus belt in what was otherwise a quiet season,” said Kyle Tapley, a meteorologist at Gaithersburg, Marylandbased MDA.
Orange juice touched a twoyear high of US$ 1.68 on Apr 23 on ICE Futures US in New York as drought in Brazil compounded concern over supply. The Standard & Poor’s GSCI gauge of 24 raw materials advanced two per cent since the end of 2013, while the MSCI AllCountry World Index of equities rose 3.4 per cent. The Bloomberg Treasury Bond Index gained 2.8 per cent.
Florida will harvest 110.3 million boxes of oranges in the season that ends Sept. 30, down 17 per cent from a year earlier and the fewest since 1985, the US Department of Agriculture said May 9. Each box weighs 90 pounds, or 41 kilogrammes.
The biggest reason for the drop is a gnat- sized insect, the Asian citrus psyllid, that was first found in Florida in 1998. The bug, which carries a bacterial disease that causes fruit to shrink and drop early, thrived in the state’s temperate climate and the sap collected from foliage. All 32 counties that produce oranges commercially are affected.
To contain the pest and limit crop losses, Boyd sprayed insecticide all year round and applied potassium salicylate to bolster the immune system of infected trees on properties he owns in Hendry, Collier, Lake and Orange counties.
That nearly tripled farm-maintenance costs to about US$ 2,100 an acre and still didn’t prevent a drop in output, which Boyd said probably will be 575,000 boxes this year, compared with 720,000 last season and peak production of 800,000 in 1999. — WP-Bloomberg