Cold Facts

Tulare County, California – California Oranges are another of the products that make America a leading force in world agriculture.  Citrus groves occupy a vast portion of the state’s Central Valley.  But citrus is a crop that depends on good weather to reach its full potential. That means plenty of sun, and temperatures above freezing – all the time.

When freezing weather hits the groves, the financial toll can be devastating. Jody Wollenman and his brother, Gy, operate a farm management company called Monte Vista Ranches. They grow some 18 hundred acres of citrus and olives on their Monte Vista Ranches south of Fresno.

She exhibits some oranges damaged during a devastating freeze that just gripped the Central Valley during several days in mid-February.

“This is pretty ugly. This is the exterior damage, which we call ice mark. This is about as severe as we’re ever going to see.  You can see all the segments have ruptured and they’re dried out.  And this is severe, severe damage.” 
                         
Although citrus farmers ran heated wind machines, irrigated, and kept fires burning through the cold nights, in most cases that just wasn’t enough to save their oranges. Groves can withstand 28-degree temperatures for up to five hours. But those temperatures dipped to the low 20s for up to eight hours, day after day.
  
California produces only a quarter of the nation’s oranges, but that crop amounts to more than 80% of the fresh navel oranges that make their way to your supermarket. 

The freeze will mean hundreds of millions of dollars in losses to the growers –not only in citrus but produce like lettuce and avocados – and higher prices to consumers in supermarkets across the Heartland.
 
Says Gy Wollenman, “I would say one of our leanest periods of cash flow because we haven’t harvested any fruit.  There’s no money coming in.  And yet we have some of the highest bills we’ve ever seen in January and February from utility bills for propane and electricity for our pumps and our wind machines.” 

Bad weather is a frequent reality for farmers and ranchers.  Most farmers carry insurance, but it often covers only a portion of their losses.

There’s a human toll as well.  After the Central Valley freeze, some 5,000 harvest hands were out of work.  Those who remained to salvage what fruit was left had less to pick.
 
Mary Segura, a harvesting supervisor at LoBue Brothers Packing, says, “The people that I am supervising, they aren’t making what they’re used to this time of the year.  And I’m pretty sure they’re having a hardship time making ends meet because they’re not making what they planned to do.”
 
It’s the same story at packing houses that process the fruit.  Says Philip LoBue, “It’s tough, because your bills keep piling up and you don’t have anything to look forward to, because the packing house, you know, isn’t working every day the same hours.”
  
A number of packing houses shut down completely after a freeze.  LoBue’s business is still going, but on limited hours. The company normally sells four million cartons of navel oranges a year.  It turns to technology to inspect the reduced number it will sell this year.  Inspectors examine the oranges with ultraviolet light to make sure what they do pack meets vendors’ high standards. LoBue explains, “If it’s cold, the oil cells in the rind are ruptured. And under a black light, those ruptured cells fluoresce and you can tell if that orange is frozen or not.”