Another year brings another reduced Florida citrus crop.
According to a collection of annual reports, released Aug. 29 by the USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service, Florida’s total citrus acreage declined 24% this year compared to last. Total production is down 28% across all classes of citrus. While lemons were added to Florida’s production this past year, some counties saw staggering losses.
Citrus Acreage Inventory
According to the annual Florida Commercial Citrus Inventory report, the state had 208,183 total acres of citrus for the 2024-25 year, representing roughly 32,538,800 trees. This is down 24% compared to the 2024 annual report, with a net loss of 66,522 acres, representing about 42,131,500 trees.
The 2024-25 acreage numbers are less than a quarter of what they were in 2000 (832,275 acres) when the survey data began.
By variety, orange acres took the largest hit, both proportionally and in raw acreage. At 183,860 acres, Florida’s orange acres are down almost 26% compared to last year’s 248,028 acres. For the 2024-25 year, orange acres represented 88.3% of total Florida citrus acres.
By comparison, total grapefruit acres (12,787) declined 10.6% from the prior year, and total specialty citrus acres (11,536) were down 6.6%.
The only variety within the report’s categories to see additional acreage in the 2025 report compared to the 2024 report was “other citrus,” part of the specialty citrus category. “Other citrus” includes lemons and excludes mandarins. That subcategory saw an additional 590 acres (11.4%) with a total of 5,762 acres in the current report.
Total citrus acreage losses came from almost every one of the 23 published counties. The two exceptions were Okeechobee County, which remained steady at 1,865 acres, and Sarasota County, which gained 44 acres of citrus (7%) with a 2024-25 total of 667 acres.
The biggest losses came from Hillsborough and DeSoto counties. Hillsborough County lost almost all of its citrus acreage in one year, going from 713 acres in the prior report to 31 acres in this year’s report, a 95.6% decline. DeSoto County saw the biggest losses in terms of raw acreage, shedding 18,910 acres (36.5%) compared to last year’s report, with a total of 32,890 acres.
Production Changes
According to the 2024-2025 Florida Citrus Production report, the state’s total production stood at 14.6 million boxes, down 28% from last year’s 20.3 million boxes. These losses were led by losses in orange production, at 12.2 million boxes, down 32% compared to last year’s 18.06 million boxes. The losses in oranges were shared proportionally across valencia and non-valencia varieties.
All grapefruit production was down 27% with 1.3 million boxes, compared to 1.79 million boxes last year. Losses in tangerines and tangelos were only 11% with 400,000 boxes compared to last year’s 450,000 boxes.
Lemon production was reported for the first time in this year’s report, with an estimated production of 670,000 boxes.
