Florida citrus

The 2008/09 Florida citrus crop is expected to hit 162m boxes, down from earlier estimations of 165m boxes, according to the United States Department of Agriculture's (USDA) National Agricultural Statistics Service.

In its January report, the USDA said that volumes had been revised downwards based solely on projections of a smaller early-midseason navel crop, which is now estimated at 84m boxes from December's forecast of 87m boxes.

Estimated volumes of other crops remained at similar levels to December. Valencias remained at 78m boxes, grapefruit stayed at 23m boxes (made up of 7m boxes of white grapefruit and 16m boxes of coloured grapefruit) and specialty crops such as tangerines (4.9m boxes) and tangelos (1.5m boxes) were also unchanged.

'This is a manageable crop and hopefully the reduced production will spur higher prices to growers because right now they are facing very high input costs associated with disease pressure and fertiliser prices,' said Michael Sparks, executive vice-president/CEO of Florida Citrus Mutual, in a statement. 'We are in the middle of a very challenging season.'

This season's overall crop is expected to fall short of volumes in 2007/08, when Florida harvested 170.2m boxes of citrus.