Fla. Hurricanes drive up cost of gift-boxed fruit for holidays
HARLINGEN, Texas (AP) – This is not exactly a season of joy for shippers of gift-boxed grapefruit and oranges. The three hurricanes that battered Florida’s citrus groves over the summer devastated the state’s grapefruit and orange crop, causing a sharp rise in wholesale prices for the fruit that is stamped, wrapped and nestled in boxes for the chilly north every Christmas season.
Some gift-box shippers in Florida and Texas, the No. 1 and No. 2 grapefruit states, are now stuck with charging the lower prices they printed in their brochures and catalogs before the storms. Others raised prices, tacking on a $2 to $4 “hurricane surcharge” when orders were placed.
“We’re paying about 50 percent more for fruit than we had planned. With the price of gasoline, the cost of getting the fruit out and delivered – it hurts the profits,” said Frank Davis, owner of Pittman & Davis, a fruit shipping business in Harlingen that decided not to risk alienating customers by imposing a surcharge.
Florida this season is expecting its smallest grapefruit crop since the Depression, and its worst orange crop in 13 years.
Traditionally, Texas’ Rio Grande Valley, with its trademark RioStar red grapefruit, is a distant second to Florida in grapefruit production, shipping 212,000 tons last year to Florida’s 1.7 million. California, with a different growing season, is third at 184,000 tons.
Texas’ orange business is small. For 2003-04, the state’s orange crop brought in $7.1 million, compared with $1.1 billion for Florida and $557 million for California.
Texas growers hope Florida’s loss is their gain, with grapefruit lovers deciding they prefer Texas’ redder fruit. Texas growers are still rebounding from freezes in 1983 and 1989 that killed trees and many farmers’ businesses.
“This year has the potential to be the most profitable year that citrus growers have had in 25 years,” said Ray Prewett, executive director of Texas Citrus Mutual, an organization of growers.