Picking Time!!

It seems that just a few days ago- I began to write this blog, actually it was December 2, the trees were looking great and the crews were picking the oranges, this was a good thing since just a couple of weeks later we would be hit with some of the coldest temperatures on record in my area of North Central Florida. This is April and winter seems like far away, everything looks good and most everybody have recuperated from the hard winter days. There were many loses, but for the most part, Florida farmers have survived. A series of strong fronts crossing the area of North and Central Florida made the past winter one of the coldest ever. According to the weather service, Deland and Fort Pierce experienced the coldest season on record. Hard freezes threatened all of the agricultural crops in Florida. Of these, the citrus farmers faced another year of high fuel prices and the possibility of losing not only the year's crop, but the precious trees as well. Oranges are Florida’s most important agricultural crop, and it is the number one producer of orange juice in the United States and the second in the world. Florida together with Brazil which is the number one producer of citrus in the world dominate about 85 percent of the world's market. Brazil exports almost its entire production of orange juice, approximately 99%. In Florida, 90% of the fruit produced is consumed in the United States.