Florida Citrus Crop Predictions Fall

The U.S. Department of Agriculture today released its February orange crop forecast for the 2008-2009 season, reducing its earlier estimate by two-and-a-half percent, or four million boxes.

The USDA did not attribute the decline to the freezes that hit the Florida citrus belt in late January and early February. Rather, the organization attributed the decline to smaller sizes and increased fruit drop, and said it would continue to assess the impact of the freezes.

The crop is now expected to total 158 million boxes.

“The USDA has taken off several million boxes since their original orange estimate in October, and with the field reports we’re getting regarding fruit damage and juice yield loss from the late January and early February freezes we would expect less juice production than we were just a month ago,” said Michael W. Sparks, executive VP/CEO of Florida Citrus Mutual.

“As a result, we would anticipate better grower returns for the late crop than what we experienced for the early crop,” Sparks said. “This is most definitely a challenging season, however, Florida citrus growers will continue to produce the quality citrus known across the globe for its taste and health benefits.”

Florida citrus was hit with a cold spell on Jan. 22 and Feb. 5, which dropped temperatures below 28 degrees for several hours on both nights.

In a release Tuesday, the USDA said, “A freeze survey…conducted on [Jan. 27-28] showed little or no damage at that time. Additional assessments will be made in mid and late February.”

The USDA makes its initial forecast in October and then revises it monthly until the end of the season in July.

In 2007-2008, Florida harvested 170.2 million boxes of oranges.

The USDA maintained its prediction that 23 million boxes of grapefruit will be produced in 2008-2009. 
The early and midseason crop is now projected at 83 million boxes, down from 84 million boxes.

The Valencias projection is now at 75 million boxes this season, down from January’s forecast of 78 million boxes.

 Florida specialty fruit is down; the USDA predicts 1.3 million boxes of tangelos, down from 1.5 million in January, and 4.6 million boxes of tangerines, down from 4.9 million.

The yield for from-concentrate orange juice is expected to be 1.61 gallons per 90-pound box, down from 1.62.

The Florida citrus industry creates a $9.3 billion annual economic impact, employing nearly 76,000 people, and covering more than 576,000 acres.

 

 

Check out the USDA website for a monthly list of citrus forecasts.

Wondering what’s coming up in Lakeland weather? See your 10-day forecast here.

 

Related articles:  Florida Orange Crop Declines for Third Month

                           Officials Seek to Stimulate Juice Sales and Florida Farm Income

                           Growers Brace for Below-Freezing Weather

 

 

Linking trends

We’ve talked quite a bit about convergence in class, and this issue fits in nicely with that idea. Media outlets are sharing writers, content and now stories. It also follows along with the trend of giving the reader as much information and choice as possible. Is it a good idea? It’s hard to say whether it’s a good idea for the media, but it’s certainly good for the readers. And I’d say that as sites all begin linking to each other, then the best ones will still stick out the most anyway, and keep readers the longest.

There is one point made in the article that struck me as interesting. Karp argues that Google sends people to other sites and “does such a good job of it that people keep coming back for more.” Google’s function is meant to send people to other sites, so is not really in the same category as news sites, but this comparison made me think that news sites are meant to share news, and hey, if they do a good job by sending people to find their news elsewhere, then maybe people will keep coming back. I mean, the yahoo.com homepage is popular for news, and most of the articles they run come from elsewhere. People keep coming back to Yahoo in part because they know they can get a plethora of news on the site.

As for whether AP and other wire services will become obsolete, I would say that may very well happen slowly over time. After all, the idea behind wire services is that they can cover events all over the place, so that Lakeland-based The Ledger can run articles about wildfires in California without sending a reporter there. But if The Ledger can just link to stories from California-based media, then they won’t need wire stories. That said though, AP and others have such a high reputation that I don’t see them being dismissed very quickly.

Ultimately though, this debate is moot. Now that some sites have started linking to others, those that haven’t will be forced to jump on this bandwagon. As readers become accustomed to Web sites that offer lots of links, options and additional information, they won’t want to return to sites that only have their own material. All it took was one medium to start moving in this direction and all of the other media had to follow – much like when one medium gets a scoop and within hours or minutes every other medium has a similar story to keep up.

Anchor tags

Living in The Bahamas is awesome!

Here is a picture: