State agricultural head tours cold-damaged farms, says hundreds of millions in losses -Naples News

State agricultural head tours cold-damaged farms, says hundreds of millions in losses -Naples News


As he looked over rows of dead tomato plants near Immokalee, Florida Agriculture Commissioner Charles Bronson shook his head and promised to do what he could to help local growers recover from a devastating freeze.

He toured South Florida on Wednesday to survey damage, visiting farms in Homestead, Belle Glade and Loxahatchee on the east coast and Felda on the west coast.

After flying into the Immokalee airport in the late afternoon, Bronson’s first stop was an 800-acre tomato farm planted by West Coast Tomatoes off State Road 29 in Felda.

Only 20 percent of the fruit on the vines could be picked ahead of a freeze on Jan. 11, said D.C. McClure, vice president of operations.

It was the same story at another tomato farm the company has nearby in Immokalee.

The freeze caught the grower with its “pants down,” McClure said, adding, “We were right in the dead middle of the harvest.”

He estimates a $4 million loss in tomatoes that were about to be harvested. He picked a green round tomato from one of the browned vines and cut it open with a sharp knife, showing Bronson that it was turning to mush inside.

“It’s not something you want to buy,” McClure said. “Unfortunately.”

Bronson responded: “I sure hate it for you,” adding that he understood how much had been invested in the farm.

“We are going to do everything we can to try to get help for you,” he said.

Help may only come in the form of low-interest loans. Some growers may not be able to qualify for them and they won’t come right away.

“I don’t think they are going to get something for nothing,” Bronson said. “They never have.”

An emergency declaration still must come from the federal government to trigger the loans and that requires the state to correctly assess the damage.

While some growers have insurance, payouts are limited.

Statewide, Bronson said losses could be in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

“It’s going to be pretty bad,” he said.

That doesn’t mean Florida doesn’t have anything to sell.

“It’s still open for business,” he said.

His department has been keeping a close eye on shipments and they are down by 60 percent for all agricultural products, compared to this time last year, Bronson said.

In Southwest Florida, losses are estimated at more than $147 million on seven of the top crops, said Gene McAvoy, a regional vegetable agent with the University of Florida/IFAS.

Those crops are tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, green beans, sweet corn, squash and cucumbers.

Those aren’t the only losses. Citrus saw damage, though it’s not as severe as expected, and cattle producers will pay millions of dollars more for feed because grass was burned by the freeze, McAvoy said.

“There’s nothing out there for the cows to eat,” he said.

Tropical fish farms also took a hit from an unusually long cold snap, including one in Collier County.

Smaller vegetable growers will struggle to survive with such huge losses from the freeze.

At least one has been forced out of business, McAvoy said.

“Once these guys go out of business, they don’t come back,” he said. “You don’t just jump into this.”

Growers are still working to salvage what they can. That’s why Bronson asked for and got a seven-day extension to an order that lifted weight restrictions on trucks to allow growers to get their products to the market more quickly.

Bronson emphasized the importance of agriculture in the state. He expects to see unemployment rise because of job losses associated with damage from the record cold this month. Already, the state’s unemployment rate has reached 12 percent, he said.

“There will be a lot of people out of work because of this,” Bronson said.

In Florida, agriculture supports jobs for more than 750,000 people, from truck drivers to farmworkers.

“People count on Florida agriculture to support their businesses and there’s a lot of them,” Bronson said.

On Monday, U.S. Rep. Adam Putnam, R-Fla., took his own tour of farms in Collier County. Last week, he visited other farms in the state to see the damage for himself. His aide described it as the “death and destruction tour.”

In a phone interview Wednesday, Putnam said he saw massive losses at a Six Ls farm southeast of Naples. The extent of the damage so far south surprised him.

“The only other time that I have seen damage this widespread was after the ‘89 freeze,” he said. “There are places in Florida that were hit as badly as 1989.”

He said now that the warm days have returned, the damage is becoming more clear after the state was in the “ice box” for about two weeks.

“It’s like cutting a flower and sticking it in the refrigerator,” he said. “As long as it’s in the refrigerator it looks good. But when you take it out, it begins to wilt quickly.”

He said the likelihood of direct payments to growers is slim. He just hopes the programs that are in place for growers will be expedited.

Florida’s Gov. Charlie Crist has asked for an emergency declaration for all counties in the state because the damage is so extensive to agriculture.

“It gives you a sense of the magnitude of the loss,” Putnam said.