{"id":165790,"date":"2026-02-23T16:43:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-23T16:43:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/165790\/"},"modified":"2026-02-23T16:43:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-23T16:43:07","slug":"florida-crop-losses-from-january-freezes-will-likely-top-3-billion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/165790\/","title":{"rendered":"Florida crop losses from January freezes will likely top $3 billion"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"text | article-text\">TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WWSB) &#8211; Two cold weather events in January may have cost Florida\u2019s farmers more than $3.1 billion in damages, the state Department of Agriculture said Monday.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">\u201cOur preliminary estimate of over $3 billion in agricultural losses makes clear what we already knew: This was one of the most damaging freeze events for Florida agriculture in history,\u201d Florida Commissioner of Agriculture Wilton Simpson said is a news release.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">The only county in Florida not reporting freeze damage was Monroe County, which includes the Florida Keys.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Strawberries and blueberries took huge hits, with production losses reported at about 80% of the remaining strawberry harvest, and 90% of the blueberry crop.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Estimated losses include:<\/p>\n<p>Tomatoes: $164,273,849Strawberries: $306,965,897Watermelons $65,437,343Sweet Corn: $255,363,251Sugarcane: $1,152,122,146Bell Peppers: $108,380,389Potatoes: $79,065,000Cabbage: $21,800,280Squash: $24,522,275Blueberries: $78,512,400Greenhouse and Nursery: $240,000,000Citrus: $674,660,336<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">These estimates draw on data from the USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service, the Florida Census of Agriculture, USDA Market News, UF-IFAS Preliminary Freeze Event Assessment, early survey and early communication between FDACS, industry leaders, and individual producers who are currently engaged in large-scale recovery efforts, the state Department of Agriculture said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Read the preliminary report here:<\/p>\n<p class=\"copyright |\">Copyright 2026 WWSB. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WWSB) &#8211; Two cold weather events in January may have cost Florida\u2019s farmers more than $3.1&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":165791,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[3204,30202,5876,28,30,29,22970,4176,18556],"class_list":["post-165790","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-agriculture","tag-citrus","tag-crops","tag-florida","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news","tag-freeze","tag-report","tag-strawberry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165790","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=165790"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165790\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/165791"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=165790"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=165790"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=165790"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}