Cold Still Hurting Florida’s Farmers
MIAMI — Deep Freeze 2010? Ice Week? No one in Florida knows quite what to call the lengthy cold snap that finally eased on Wednesday, but there is little doubt that its economic and social impact will be memorable and significant.
Orange trees in Clermont, Fla., after they were sprayed with water to help insulate them from the cold. The damage to Florida’s citrus harvest is unclear. More Photos >
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A dead iguana lies on a path after falling from a tree in Davie, Fla. More Photos »
This was not the standard winter chill. For nearly two weeks, the Sunshine State felt like a meat locker with record lows north and south. Economists said the total cost to agriculture alone could reach into the hundreds of millions of dollars, adding another bruise to a beaten-down economy.
“First, we had the credit freeze that caused the housing market to wither,” said Sean Snaith, director of the Institute for Economic Competitiveness at the University of Central Florida. “Now, while we’re down, we get another kick from Mother Nature.”
A complete assessment of the damage will take weeks, and Florida still appears to have avoided the historical worst — like the trees that seemed to explode from frozen sap in the freeze of 1895. But this year’s arctic blast was the state’s longest cold stretch in decades, and by all accounts, its toll has been harsh and unpredictable up and down the food chain.
Vegetables were among the hardest hit. At least one major tomato grower, Ag-Mart Produce, has already declared that most of its Florida crop is “useless due to the freeze.” Other vegetable farms were expected to lose their entire crop, and wholesale prices have already increased.
“Tomatoes were down around $14 for a 25-pound box; now they are up over $20,” said Gene McAvoy, an agriculture expert with the University Florida, who predicted $100 million in vegetable losses. “Peppers — just after New Year’s they were $8 a box; now they’re up around $18.”
Translation: get ready to pay up to an extra dollar a pound at supermarkets in New York and Chicago.
Citrus will take longer to play out. Agriculture experts say the amount of loss will depend in part on how many trees show signs of damage, hurting future production, and how much fruit farmers harvest for juice before it falls to ground.
As temperatures crept into the 60s in much of the state Wednesday, the damage was not expected to be as crushing as the freezes of 1983 and 1984, which led to citrus losses of more than $1 billion.
Strawberries also seem to have made it through. Ted Campbell, executive director of the Florida Strawberry Growers Association, said that while ripe fruit would be lost, most of the plants after the freeze looked ready to produce their second and third rounds of berries. Mr. Campbell added that he hoped they would hurry up.
“It’s a natural response when a plant comes close to death,” he said. “It wants to reproduce itself.”
Animals, it seems, are responding to the cold with less vigor. Tropical fish farmed for hobbyists and wild fish often caught for fun have been turning up dead all over the state. There were so many cold-stunned sea turtles needing heat in the Florida Keys that they overwhelmed a shelter and had to be put in hotel rooms.
Then there are the cold-blooded invasive visitors from warmer climes — iguanas and pythons. Both started out as pets before reproducing into the thousands once set free by reckless owners and hurricanes. Now, scientists hope, many will have been killed off by the cold.
“A lot of these invasive exotics come from southern climates, and they won’t be able to withstand a cold spell for this long,” said Linda Friar, a spokeswoman for Everglades National Park. “And as they die off, the native species, the alligators and birds, are happily consuming them.”
As for humans, that class of Floridian has been just as stunned as the reptiles.
Energy use during the freeze increased like never before. Florida Power and Light, the state’s largest utility, said that on Monday morning, customers drew down 24,354 megawatts of power, breaking the record of 22,300 megawatt hours set in August 2005.
Entrepreneurs also emerged like umbrella salesmen in a Manhattan downpour — pickup trucks holding wood for sale popped up in Pensacola over the weekend — but not every warming idea proved successful. A family in North Miami and another in St. Petersburg were hospitalized for carbon monoxide poisoning after using their charcoal grills as indoor heaters.
The more common response was to stay in. In an area defined by the outdoors, hibernation became the standard. Boats stayed docked. Suntans faded, parking opened up in South Beach, while the sands and seas of Florida’s coast were handed back to nature, at least temporarily.
Those who ventured out did not seem to mind.
“I like it the way it is,” said David Schwartz, 41, sitting on the sand with his wife and only a few seagulls Tuesday, having recently arrived from upstate New York. “My vacation is to get disconnected from the normal life, not to swim, so the fact that it’s empty, it’s good.”
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