April is generally a quiet month for the USDA crop production report, but last week’s WASDE update had some interesting items when it comes to citrus.
USDA economist Seth Meyer says that we are starting to see some of the implications for the February freeze in Texas.
The forecast for all orange production is down by 30 percent. Florida production numbers were down seven percent.
According to Meyer, “We had a really large increase in the drop, there’s this loss of production that comes from dropped fruit, and we saw that have an effect and that I think was a Florida effect that tends to be a lagging effect from drought.”
Nationwide, orange production is down four percent from the March estimates.
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