By: Jay Waagmeester, The Florida Phoenix <\/p>\n
Florida\u2019s orange production forecast looks a little brighter this quarter.<\/p>\n
Compared to January\u2019s citrus forecast, the\u00a0U.S. Department of Agriculture\u2019s April production\u00a0forecast for oranges rose by 2%.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The increase in oranges represents 200,000 more boxes, from January\u2019s projected 12 million boxes to April\u2019s 12.2 million. If the forecast comes true, the 2025-2026 harvest will result in 1% less production than the previous season, which produced 12.28 million boxes.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In 2023-2024, the state produced more than 18 million boxes. In\u00a02004, the state produced more than 240 million boxes of oranges. The decline over the years is attributed largely to citrus greening and severe weather.<\/p>\n
Three hurricanes battered Florida in the second half of 2024, putting, at the time, expected agricultural losses near\u00a0$1 billion.\u00a0<\/p>\n
This quarter\u2019s grapefruit forecast production is up by 4%, putting expected production at 1.25 million boxes. Lemon production is up by 29%, with expected production at 900,000 boxes. Tangerine and tangelo production is up by 13%.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In early 2026, the state experienced freezing temperatures. Florida Agriculture Commissioner Wilton Simpson\u00a0estimated\u00a0those freezes could drop agricultural production by $3 billion. Those losses included citrus, tomatoes, strawberries, watermelons, sugarcane, greenhouse plants, and more.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The freezes happened Dec. 30-Jan. 1 and Jan 26-Feb. 4. During which, 66 of 67 counties in the state experienced multiple hours of freezing temperatures.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By: Jay Waagmeester, The Florida Phoenix Florida\u2019s orange production forecast looks a little brighter this quarter. Compared to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":230182,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[232,234,233],"class_list":["post-230181","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tallahassee","tag-tallahassee","tag-tallahassee-headlines","tag-tallahassee-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230181","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=230181"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230181\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/230182"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=230181"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=230181"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=230181"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}