Food and Resource Economics
Citrus is by far the largest industry within Florida’s agriculture. Since 2005 the Florida citrus industry is facing the challenges posed by citrus greening disease (Huanglongbing, HLB). As a consequence of the significant impact of HLB, and given that there is still no treatment or management strategy to cure the disease, growers make changes to their annual cultural practices to try to cope with it. Timely economic information is more critical than ever for industry stakeholders to make informed decisions. In this page, we provide annual reports on cultural practices and production costs by region, custom rate charges, harvesting charges, fresh fruit packing charges, and relevant extension articles.
We also provide a user-friendly spreadsheet for the calculation of establishment and production costs of a new citrus grove, which helps evaluate an investment in new citrus plantings in Florida. The model provides estimates of profitability and return on investment by making assumptions about irrigation and machinery, production practices and their costs, yield per tree, and market prices. The spreadsheet also allows the user to develop customized estimates by modifying some of the variables of interest.
