Drought's Consumer Cost Likely To Crop Up Soon

TAMPA - The two-year drought gripping nearly all of Florida has extracted a toll in the hundreds of millions of dollars from the state's agriculture industry and people could begin seeing a pinch in the produce aisle next month.

The value of the state's agricultural products - including citrus, cattle and landscape plants - dropped about $860 million, or 11 percent, between 2005 and 2006. Those are the latest years with complete figures available.

Other factors also are playing a role in the decline of agriculture revenue, but the 2006 drop was similar to declines seen during the last drought from 1998 through 2001, said Dan Sleep, senior analyst with the state Department of Agriculture.

Come spring, when Florida's vegetable crops are harvested and hit supermarkets, the drought's bill may reach shoppers.

"It's too early to tell but consumers could see prices go up 10 or 20 percent," Sleep said.

Even if supermarkets replace the stunted Florida crops with imports, the countries they come from could raise prices to meet the bigger demand.

"There's only a finite supply," Sleep said.

Dean Mixon's family has grown citrus in Bradenton since 1929 and has endured drought before. But he is seeing it again, in fruit that's slower to mature.

"The honeybells are one notch smaller," Mixon said.

It could get worse. An agriculture department study estimates that if drought conditions don't ease by the end of summer, the cost to agriculture could hit $1 billion, or 14.5 percent, for 2008.

"Sometimes the impacts are hard to determine until after the harvest," said Alan Peirce, manager of government affairs for the Florida Fruit and Vegetable Association, based in Maitland.

The effect of drought on farming can be far-reaching.

Farms produce less per acre. Oranges are smaller. Calves can't forage on dried pasture and gain less weight unless supplemented by costly hay or feed. Vegetables may not meet size and appearance standards that produce wholesalers demand.

"Quality is a big factor. If the cucumbers are too small or deformed, they get rejected," Peirce said.

Harvest To Begin Soon

The rich, fertile soil south of Lake Okeechobee produces the bulk of the country's vegetables during the spring, and harvesting will begin soon.

But those 500,000 acres of verdant farmland around Belle Glade are also in one of the areas in the state hardest hit by drought. Irrigated by water from Lake Okeechobee, farms this year are getting less than half the water that they normally receive.

Lake Okeechobee is at record low levels for this time of year, so low that irrigation water must be pumped from the lake because water levels aren't high enough for gravity to push it.

"There's a huge amount of concern what will happen," Peirce said. "In normal rainfall years they don't need much irrigation. I don't think we'll see crop failure. I think you'll see reduced yield."

A drop in yield of 20 percent or 30 percent erases a farmer's profit, he said.

"What we don't know are the yields," Sleep said. "Everything in a vegetable is water."

Fruit and vegetable crops were worth $240 million less in 2006 than in 2005, falling from $1.8 billion to $1.56 billion. That's approaching a value of just $1.4 billion in 2002, the low for fruits and vegetables reached in the last drought.

Figures for 2007 won't be available until June.

"There's concern that 2006 was a wake-up call," Sleep said.

Trees Produce Smaller Oranges

Bradenton grower Mixon said some varieties of fresh fruit aren't ready to ship for two weeks or a month later than scheduled.

"Everybody wants big fruit," Mixon lamented. "But we've seen this before."

At the Florida's Natural juice plant in Lake Wales, millions of oranges are processed each day during the citrus harvesting season. This year, they're smaller, so the plant must process more oranges to get a gallon of the breakfast drink.

It takes about 19,000 more oranges than last year to fill each of the 300 tractor-trailers that dump their cargo at the plant daily, an increase of about 11 percent.

As chutes channel the fruit in orange rivers to 54 machines that extract the juice, the extra oranges add about a minute to the time each trailer load takes to process. Over the course of a day, that can amount to five additional hours to process 300 trailer loads.

The extra time isn't likely to affect prices for shoppers, said Dave Crumbly, vice president for agricultural services. But they'll feel it next year unless rain comes before fall.

Although oranges this year are smaller, trees are producing more of them, which puts a strain on them next season. That may mean they will drop fruit early, making them no good to growers, to preserve energy and scarce water in an act of self-preservation.

"Coupled with the dry conditions after a big crop, the trees might start to drop fruit off during the growing season," Crumbly said.

Planting Less To Compensate

One way farmers combat successive years of low yields is to plant less the next season, Sleep said.

"They might not be comfortable putting tens of millions of dollars worth of crops in the ground," he said.

That's the point when economic losses start rippling beyond the farms.

Fewer crops need fewer farm workers. Farmers buy less seed, fertilizer and farm equipment. Trucking companies that rely on contracts to haul produce don't have as much work.

The companies and their workers get less money.

Every $1 million in losses for farmers multiplies to become a $2.3 million loss across the larger economy, the agriculture department says, using a formula from the University of Florida that determines the effect of one segment of the economy on others.

Said Sleep, "As we come out of the summer with no relief in sight, then the losses could hit $1 billion. It's pretty sad when you sit back and wish for some early hurricanes."