August 7,2018-
California farms pulled over 3400 acres of navel oranges from production between 2016 and this year says a new USDA report. Meanwhile mandarin plantings climbed by over 2,000 acres. Navel acreage in the Golden State stands now at 117,338.
The lower acreage here comes as Florida orange production (all varieties) continues to plummet to 44,000 boxes in 17/18, virtually the same as California this year. Florida’s production was 81,700 boxes in 15/16 and 68,500 in 16/17.
Florida has been hard hit by both weather and citrus greening problems.The percentage of fruit drop has increased within the past few years to 68% from 19% in 2014.
California all orange production is also down from 57,200 boxes in 15/16.
Tulare County remains the top navel orange county in the state but has over 1000 fewer navel acres planted, still more than half the state supply. Valencia acreage also fell about 1500 acres between the two-year survey period.
On the plus side, California growers continue to plant more tangerine/mandarin varieties with acreage now topping 62,000 compared to 59,000 acres in 2016. Most of that increase is seen inTulare County, up from 20,565 to 22,342 acres or over one-third of the state’ supply. Kern County is a close second with 20,000 acres.
Lemon productions up slightly with Tulare County the state leader in new lemon tree plantings at 1434 acres compared to just 560 new acres in the state lemon leader Ventura County.
In the meantime of total mandarin production in the US is small ( 758,000 tons) compared to other nations- particularly China with 21 million tons in 2017/18 out of 30 million tons worldwide. Turkey, the EU, Morocco and Japan all produce more mandarins than the US.
