‘There’s no way to give it all away’
ideal growing conditions and huge crops, as have Arizona and California. Florida’s agriculture industry is wondering why the much-touted “buy local” movement isn’t helping more.
The result: A harsh lesson in agricultural economics.
Retail prices for celery, tomatoes, peppers, lettuce and other vegetables are down by as much as 50 percent compared with a year ago, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s most recent market report. That’s great for consumers, but if prices are too low, farmers can’t cover their costs, make a profit and stay in business. So, the produce sits in the field. Belle Glade-based grower Rick Roth, president of Roth Farms, said, “dirt cheap” imports from Mexico, where production costs are lower and regulations are less strict, are playing a big role in the low prices.
“It’s happening all over with the vegetable market in general. There is not really any demand for anything. Everything is cheap and oversupplied,” Roth said.
“We’re doing half our normal volume,” Roth said. “This is probably the worst start we have had to our season. It starts in November, and it has been terrible from the beginning.”
DiMare, one of the state’s largest tomato growers, said, “Prices were suppressed, and demand was so poor that product was left in the field. A lot of growers walked away from tomatoes. I don’t know the final tally. We are still in production.”
With prices farmers were receiving for tomatoes dropping to $3 to $5 a box, it made no sense to spend $4 to $4.50 to pick and pack them and lose even more money. A break-even price is about $10 a box. It costs $10,000 to produce an acre of tomatoes.
“The Palmetto-Ruskin area is having its second back-to-back significant crop loss from a market standpoint,” DiMare added. “The spring season was an absolute disaster as well. At the end of the day, you are talking about potentially losing growers. These are multigenerational family operations. Once you lose these operations, that is not coming back.”
Gene McAvoy, Hendry County extension director and regional extension agent for Southwest Florida, said he recently saw a 100acre field of tomatoes in Hendry County that wasn’t going to be harvested. It’s one of many.
“A 100-acre field probably produces over 3 million pounds of tomatoes. In some instances, it goes to food banks. In Immokalee alone last year, farmers donated over 3 million pounds of vegetables,” McAvoy said. “There’s no way to give it all away.”
The plants are sprayed with herbicide, then disked, or plowed into the ground, to discourage insects and prevent diseases. There’s no way to know how much produce has gone unharvested, but some guesstimates place it as high as 50 percent.
Growers are frustrated, McAvoy said, and discouraged that produce buyers are going for the cheapest price, despite the supposed popularity of the buy-local movement.
Robin Safley, executive director of Feeding Florida, formerly known as the Florida Association of Food Banks, said that in December the group’s 14 food bank members had access to 6 million pounds of produce, but could absorb only 2 million pounds.
“There was an extreme abundance because of the weather,” said Safley, who is looking at ways to increase refrigerated storage capacity and add more mobile distribution directly to consumers from refrigerated trucks.
In general, though, food banks simply don’t have the manpower, facilities and network to harvest, wash, pack, store and distribute so many more millions of pounds of produce at one time.
For example, boxes for toting produce can cost $1 each. Picking and packing each box adds as much as another $4.50. Add in transportation in a refrigerated vehicle and storage costs, and it’s clear why nonprofit food banks simply can’t accommodate double or triple the volume that now ends up being abandoned in the fields.
Stephen Basore, food safety manager and a principal owner at TKM-Bengard Farms in Belle Glade, said the grower of lettuce and leafy greens sells everything in advance by contract at a set price, so it has been protected from the downturn.
However, the farm does grow some extra crop in case there’s a weather impact, with the idea of selling the surplus. This year that surplus has so far been disked.
Because the weather has been so warm, lettuce has been picked early on the young side before it begins to “bolt” or flower.
“In the last week the weather has cooled down here, so now things are kind of adjusting,” Basore said. “We are hoping the temperatures stay cool. The optimum would be highs in the mid 70s and lows in the 50s. “
The season doesn’t end until May, and some are hopeful that demand and prices will turn around. Prices are up slightly.
Reggie Brown, vice president of the Florida Tomato Exchange, said the supply of tomatoes has outstripped demand. “We’ve seen yields that have been absolutely spectacular and demand that has been probably typical of the holiday season, which is not real strong for tomatoes.”
Brown believes that the situation is improving.
“It only takes a little bit of oversupply to collapse a market. This year we had a lot of oversupply,” Brown said.
Lisa Lochridge, spokeswoman, Florida Fruit & Vegetable Association, said, “Market conditions are pretty challenging right now for growers for a number of reasons. It’s been kind of a perfect storm — but in a bad way. The thing to keep in mind is that here in Florida, a less-than-desirable market can change in a very short time. So even though things are tough right now, those conditions can shift and improve in a matter of days or weeks. As challenging as they are, growers are used to these kinds of cycles.”