There’s no question that Florida’s specialty crops were impacted by a late January, early February freeze, but the severity of the damage depends both on the crop and the location.
Philip Harmon, professor of plant pathology and extension specialist with the University of Florida’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences, describes the damage he’s seen from the state’s blueberry growers as “devastating.”
“Growing fruits and vegetables in Florida is a challenging career to take,” he says.
But one thing Harmon knows about the state’s blueberry growers is that no matter the challenge, these growers will replant.
“The consistent human side of this is that these guys are resilient,” he says. “They’re super hardworking, and they are not the kind of people to give up.”
A Year of Income Lost in One Night
Harmon, located in Gainesville, Fla., says the damage varies across the state and by variety. He’s seen damage on young blueberry plantings and plantings 20 years or older, all hit by the storm.
While growers were as prepared as they could be for freeze damage, which is common during the blueberry season, this year brought a perfect storm of conditions that lead to the loss.
“It was extreme, and I’d like to believe that this is a one-off sort of thing that we might not see again so soon,” Harmon says. “Just because it was so weird in how it materialized and how it swung from record highs in mid-January to these record lows in the first week of February.”
He says that dramatic shift was the real kicker.
“This was a stack back against them with this storm of the generation,” he says. “It’s really something that we hadn’t seen and couldn’t really plan for, because it’s not something that was expected or that was within our lexicon of what was even possible prior to this.”
Harmon says it’s a tough loss for growers because even those who were ready and had contingency plans were still impacted.
“The real heartbreaker of this story is that, with the wind, with the perfect storm of conditions, not even our best and most prepared growers come out unscathed,” he says. “They have tremendous losses. And in fact, some of the best growers are seeing some of the most severe losses. So, this is an inequality of effort to outcome. … They’re devastated by this loss, because they literally put 364 days into this crop and lost it in 12 hours of cold temperatures and blowing wind; their entire year’s worth of income went up in smoke.”
Harmon says growers’ attention now turns to crop insurance, disaster relief and other federal programs that could help them rebuild.
“It’s an injustice, because the hard work here that these folks do day to day to make a crop for us, to produce food for us that didn’t pay out, and it wasn’t any fault of their own,” he says. “That’s the real kind of heartbreaker for me to see these guys very resilient — and they will come back — but discouraged by this event and uncertain about how they’re going to be able to navigate the potential resources available to them to try to keep their enterprises afloat, and try to make their farms whole again and be able to produce a crop next year.”
Growers have a good mix of varieties to balance out the ebbs and flows within production, but unfortunately, this storm was a great equalizer.
“Our growers do a better job than most of building that into the system and protection by hedging their bets, so to speak,” Harmon says. “This year, nobody won this game.”
Greening and Cold Converge to Put New Stress on Florida Citrus
“It’s kind of a mixed bag,” says Tripti Vashisth, an associate professor of horticultural sciences and a citrus Extension specialist with UF/IFAS, in assessing how the state’s citrus growers fared.
“It depends where you are in the state, and even within that location where you were, if your groves were more low-lying, the cold stayed there longer, and the temperature got really low,” she explains.
Some areas lost flower buds and leaves due to the cold and wind. While wind caused some fruit drop, Vashisth, located in Lake Alfred, Fla., says there likely will be fruit drop, too, in the coming weeks. Some fruit froze, which will affect quality.
Trees already stressed with citrus greening disease will likely have more stress.
“These trees were already struggling; they did not have a whole lot of leaves on them,” Vashisth says. “Canopies are often thin on these trees with not a whole lot of fruit. Now with freeze, we will be losing more leaves, so now the tree would have to spend more resources in making leaves.”
Because these canopies were thinner in trees with greening, there will be more damage.
“On the bigger trees. If they had a more fuller canopy, they would have more biomass to insulate from the freeze,” she says. “But now these are thinner canopies, so they are more exposed to the low temperatures too.”
That’s added to the stress these trees face fighting the citrus greening pathogen, which means it will take longer for damaged trees to recover, Vashisth says. The real challenge, she adds, is growers are not just farming this year’s crop but also helping the tree set buds for next year.
“Investing in tree health will go a longer way,” Vashisth says. “The dilemma that growers are in: They are paid for the fruit, not for the leaves, so it becomes very difficult to see the benefit in the short term, and they have to make these hard decisions based on economics. But as a researcher in horticulture, the recommendation would be, again, help the tree in recovering from these damages, and hopefully if you have a healthier tree, we can have better-quality fruit and more fruit in subsequent years.”
Mark Ritenour, professor of postharvest technology with UF/IFAS, says growers typically try to harvest citrus fruit before the end of December to avoid cold damage, but some still have fruit on trees going into January.
Ritenour, stationed in Fort Pierce, Fla., says he can’t remember the last time a storm hit the state as it did.
“This has been a unique one for us, though,” he says. “I can’t remember the time when it got this cold down here for this long, so it’s been quite a while since I’ve been here.”
He says he suspects there will be postharvest damage from this storm, however, it’s going to be a few weeks before the true extent is seen. Fruit that suffers freeze damage typically will have vesicles that have dried out and will be lighter.
Fruit damage from radiation freezes — cold-weather events that can happen in calm and clear weather — show up at the top of the fruit, but cold damage from windy weather shows up differently.
“It was more windy this time,” he says. “You’re going to get the freezing occurring mostly initially on the wind-exposed side of the fruit.”
Ritenour also notes that trees infected with citrus greening would have thinner canopies that could shield the fruit from damage. He adds that he’s heard fruit grown under citrus protection screens “look like they’re doing pretty good.”
To understand the full extent of freeze damage on fruit, growers often have to wait for the fruit to drop in the grove. However, thanks to modern technology, assessing freeze damage in the packinghouse has gotten much easier.
“We have optical and vision and weight-grading systems in the packinghouse, and we can separate it out that way,” Ritenour says. “We can use our vision and weight-grading systems now to determine density and remove fruit that way, but it has to dry out some before we can really tell.”
Strawberries Enter a Wait-and-See Recovery
The state’s strawberry growers used overhead sprinkler irrigation to prevent the plants from suffering too much from a hard freeze, but they still suffered some damage, says Wael Elwakil, Extension agent in fruit and vegetable production with UF/IFAS in Hillsborough County.
“The damage to the immature fruit and flowers will continue to unfold until mid-February,” he says. “Generally, it takes approximately three weeks for a new flower to become ready to harvest fruit, depending on the weather and crop management.”
He says strawberry growers have reported between 20% to 60% losses during the week following the freeze.
“There were some extreme situations where reported losses reached up to 70% or more with certain varieties or freeze protection failures due to the storm,” he says.
Joe Klick, associate vice president of product management at Naturipe Farms, says a bright spot was for growers who used row covers.
“Some growers do have fruit under tunnels, and they believe a higher percentage of that crop was able to be protected and saved,” he says. “We are still working closely with our growers to fully assess the extent of the damage.”
Klick says for many growers, it’s a wait-and-see period to understand how each variety will come through the cold snap.
“Weather is always one of the biggest variables in farming, and as much as we would love to be able to control Mother Nature, we simply cannot,” he says.
Elwakil says growers must now focus on managing disease issues, along with the added moisture and wind damage, to help plants recover.
“Growers are resilient and trying to stay positive and powering through,” he says. “They look forward and quickly adapt to adjust to market needs and current production volumes.”
Nick Wishnatzki, public relations director for Wish Farms, says the storm caused some growers to discard damaged fruit, with most losing between 10% to 20% of blooms.
“Growers in the Plant City/Dover area experienced a more significant impact, largely due to strong winds that accompanied the freeze,” he says. “Farms farther south reported comparatively lighter damage.”
But production is already rebounding with warmer weather, Wishnatzki says.
“The bloom losses from the freeze mean that volumes in late February and early March may fall below levels typical of previous seasons,” he says. “Fortunately, the cold’s impact is limited to volume issues specifically; fruit quality and flavor remain exceptional, and we expect that to continue.”
And Elwakil says that oftentimes after storms like the one the state’s growers just experienced, the market is more challenging than the storm itself.
“Support Florida farmers by purchasing Florida produce,” he says.
