Florida tomato growers may have lost 70% of crop to cold

Freezing temperatures last month took their toll on fragile tomato plants across the state, resulting in a 70 percent loss, growers say.

New plants were put into the ground, and the hopes of a partial recovery began to grow, after the 11-day freeze in January. Now farmers are bracing for another icy night, with temperatures expected to dip below freezing all the way south to Immokalee in the heart of tomato growing country.

The upshot of the farming disaster is that tomatoes are more expensive and that in some locales, like restaurants and markets, they just aren't there.

Reggie Brown, executive vice president of Florida Tomato Growers Exchange in Maitland, said: "Since the freeze last month, we've had a reduction by about 70 percent volume."

Normally, this time of year, the Florida tomatoes feed all of North America, he said. It's the only crop grown in the United States this time of year.

The tomato plants planted after the January freeze are growing slowly because of cool weather. Farmers hope that by April, normal production will be back. But for February and March, the demand for tomatoes likely will exceed the supply, Brown said. The industry, which includes growers mostly in Central and South Florida, is hurting.

"This year's weather was one of those for the record books," he said.

"Crippling," is the way Brown described the loss. "We've got growers who could have had as much as $10,000 an acre in a crop that was destroyed by the freeze. Those kinds of losses are hard to recover from."

Tomato consumers, he said, may suffer for a couple of months.

"When supplies are limited in a supply-demand marketplace, prices go up," he said. Some markets turned to tomatoes from Mexico, which also are limited because of weather issues, Brown said.

Growers hope the short supply doesn't sour customers.

"We're always concerned that customers will go to another source," Brown said. "And we're concerned that consumers will cease consumption and walk away. The market doesn't recover quickly when people stop consuming tomatoes. It takes a long time for customers to come back."

He said this is the biggest supply disruption of Florida-grown tomatoes in 20 years.

Some growers, he said, "probably never will be made whole. But when you get into this business, you have to be optimistic that business will get better or you have to exit the business."

TOMATO FACTS

•Florida ranks first in the nation in value of production of fresh tomatoes.

•Florida ships more than 1.1 billion pounds of fresh tomatoes to the United States, Canada and abroad.

•Total tomato crop value at the farm level exceeds $619 million.

•The cost of producing and harvesting tomatoes averages nearly $12,000 per acre.

•Tomatoes comprise nearly one-third the total value of all fresh vegetables produced in Florida each year.

Source: Florida Tomato Growers Exchange