Photo from National Weather Service shows northern Florida and southern Georgia expecting a frost tonight.
University of Florida/IFAS is warning its vegetable and specialty crop growers of low temperatures expected tonight in some parts of the state.
In an email sent by Gary England, UF/IFAS Extension Agent IV Emeritus, he reminds growers that the National Weather Service has issued free warnings for all north Florida locations west of the St. Johns River tonight. The warning area stretches south along the west coast to Hernando County and includes Sumter and most of Marion Counties in north central Florida. A Freeze Watch is posted for Pasco County.
Temperatures are expected to dip as low as the upper 20s from south Georgia down to Gainesville, Florida and at or a few degrees below freezing further south in the warning areas.
BALM, Fla. — A white strawberry? Not red? Yes, you “read” that right. And it smells a little like a pineapple. It’s also novel in that it’s the first white strawberry to go to market in the United States.
Just in time for the west-central Florida strawberry harvesting season, which runs from now until the end of March, UF/IFAS is releasing not one, but two new varieties – and the white strawberry is one of them. The other: another cultivar that UF/IFAS’ primary breeder says tastes oh-so-good.
Neither variety has a name yet. They’re known by numbers, which is typical early in the cultivar-release process. So far, they’re known as ‘FL 16.78-109’ (the white strawberry) and ‘FL 16.30-128’ (the red strawberry), said Vance Whitaker, a UF/IFAS associate professor of horticultural sciences and a strawberry breeder.
“Because the white strawberry is being test-marketed this year, there has been a lot of interest in it,” said Whitaker, a faculty member at the Gulf Coast Research and Education Center. In fact, a grower told Whitaker that some chefs like the new fruit.
When it’s ripe and ready to eat, it is white inside and out, with a slight pink blush on the skin and red seeds, he said.
“The flavor is very different from a typical strawberry, sweet but with a pineapple-like aroma,” Whitaker said. “White strawberries have been popular for some time in Japan, but this is expected to be the first white strawberry on the market in the United States.”
You can find white strawberries in nature, he said. Breeders have harnessed this naturally occurring trait, crossing white strawberries from the wild with modern strawberries to create something different in both appearance and taste.
Here’s how the white strawberry came about.
In 2012 strawberry seeds from Japan were sown at the University of Florida, and a few small plants recovered. The pollen from these plants were crossed with a Florida variety. The seedlings from this cross-produced fruit that ranged from white to pink to red, Whitaker said.
“Commercial trials have been promising so far,” he said. “Pickers can tell when the fruit is ripe when a slight pink blush develops on the side of the fruit that is most exposed to the sun, and when most of the seeds turn red. By 2022, these new white strawberries should be available in U.S. grocery stores. They will probably be marketed as “pineberries” because of the pineapple aroma.”
Whitaker also touts the consistently even red color and conical shape of the new red variety, making the fruit more attractive.
Here’s how the colors differ in the two strawberries: The red from a typical strawberry comes from pigments called anthocyanins. White strawberries produce much lower amounts of these compounds in their flesh than red strawberries, Whitaker said.
As harvest arrives, farmers will welcome the new red and white strawberries from UF/IFAS, Whitaker said. UF/IFAS researchers and the Florida Strawberry Growers Association estimate strawberries generate about $300 million annually for those who farm them.
Out of the 10,000 acres of strawberries in west-central Florida, the new red strawberry may occupy as much as 300 acres in Florida during the 2021-2022 season, and if it continues to perform well, that number could grow.
The white strawberry, or “pineberry,” will be grown on fewer acres since it is a new specialty product. It will take time for farmers to become comfortable growing it, and it will also take time to educate consumers about this new fruit.
“The new red strawberry is notable for its outstanding flavor,” Whitaker said. “Because of its high sugar level, it tastes somewhat similar to (another UF/IFAS variety called) Sensation®, which is currently one of the leading varieties in Florida, yet with a more intense flavor due to the fruit’s higher acid content.”
Image of Neopestalotiopsis leaf spot from Georgia strawberries (provided by Mark Frye; Wayne County Cooperative Extension Service).
Georgia strawberry producers need to be wary of Neopestalotiopsis; a disease that has already devastated Florida production and could have wide-ranging impact on Georgia’s crop if farmers are not proactive.
Phil Brannen, University of Georgia Cooperative Extension Fruit Disease Specialist, cautions farmers that while the disease has been found in just one Georgia location and only as leaf spotting, there is a common link to suggest there could potentially be additional cases.
“We know that particular pathogen, Neopestalotiopsis, that’s been causing devastating losses in Florida, we’ve got. Our environment may be different. We’re a little bit colder than they are down in South Florida and that may help us. We just don’t know,” Brannen said.
“So far, we haven’t seen it on fruit, obviously. It’s the wrong time of year. But the fact that it’s on the leaves, that follows what they’ve seen this year. They got it a few weeks earlier than we did from some of the plants they’ve got down there.”
Same Origin
Many of the strawberry plants originate from the same nursery in North Carolina, where there have been widespread problems associated with this disease. That leads Brannen to believe this is just the beginning.
“I think coming from that nursery we’re going to see more, because of the association with this one nursery in North Carolina. I suspect that anybody who got their plants from that nursery stands a good chance of having it,” Brannen said.
Fungicides Available
Brannen says the best fungicides available are Switch and thiram. They provide suppression of the disease, though it is less than 50% control. Still, any control is better than no control to avoid a major outbreak.
“It hopefully will get (producers) through this year and allow them to produce strawberries. If it’s like it is in Florida, what would happen potentially in the spring, we’ll come through and those plants will die and the fruit. Any fruit that’s produced will be covered in spots and you can’t sell those. Ultimately, the plants actually die,” Brannen said.
“It’s an aggressive pathogen. It does what three or four pathogens do. There are some other pathogens that can infect the crown and kill the plant and also infect the fruit, anthracnose being one. But that’s not often the case. Most of the time you’ll either see a fruit rot or maybe limited crown rot. This one is really aggressive.
“Basically, it chews the plant up and spits it out.”
Drastic Measures
It is so severe in Florida that growers have had to rip up the whole planting and start over, which is not a possibility in Georgia if growers expect to get a crop in this year.
“I hope it’s going to get cold enough to where it won’t be as aggressive. I’m not sure what’s going to happen in the spring but we’re going to find out,” he added.
Vegetable and specialty crop producers who utilize the H-2A program will not have to stress over wage increases for the 2021 and 2022 growing seasons. This is incredibly helpful for farmers in Georgia and Florida – avid users of the program – who will navigate a growing season amid rising expense costs, another potential COVID-19 shutdown and trade that is bringing down market prices.
Labor Expenses
Allison Crittendon, Director of Congressional Relations at the American Farm Bureau Federation, said labor expenses are a major portion of the expense budget farmers operate by every year.
This final rule that was released by the Department of Labor on Nov. 2, amends the methodology used to set the Adverse Effect Wage Rate. It was much needed since there were concerns for some time over the quality of the data used and how the old method created variability from year to year.
“Labor expenses vary by the kind of agriculture someone is involved in. In states where labor intensive agriculture is most prevalent, Florida or California, their labor expenditures make up somewhere between 20% to 30% of their operating expenses,” Crittendon said. “To know the increases there are predictable and stable instead of extreme and variable is incredibly helpful to agriculture and to those business owners, those farmers that are trying to figure out how they’re going to navigate another growing season.”
Unpredictability in Previous Wage Rule
The unpredictability of the previous wage rule was a major reason a change was made. Crittendon said in one region, between 2018 and 2019, farmers had a 23% increase in wages in just one year. It’s almost impossible for farmers to plan for an increase of that magnitude.
After two years of frozen wages, the wage increase will be based on percentage change in employment cost index in 2023. It’s a different metric with a more predictable steady growth rate.
Crittendon and her colleagues have looked at the employment cost index over the last decade and it’s ranged from a 1.7% to 2.9% increase in a given year with the 10-year average at 2.24%.
“You’re going from, in some regions really drastic double digit increases in one year to move into a metric that’s starting in 2023; it’ll be a guaranteed increase but it’ll be a predictable steady increase which will allow farms to make other planning decisions and figure out how they want to structure their labor in the coming year,” Crittendon said.
Who’s Covered?
It is estimated that 97% of H-2A workers will be covered for 2021 and 2022. These include graders and sorters of Ag products, Ag equipment operators, farm workers, crop nursery greenhouse farm workers, farm workers of farm ranch and aquacultural animals, agriculture workers and packers and packagers.
While 2020 is nearly in the books, farmers are looking ahead to 2021 with the same outlook of uncertainty they had this year following the coronavirus outbreak in March.
There’s uncertainty regarding COVID-19 and a risk of not knowing if there will be another nationwide shutdown that could lead to more market disruptions like the ones that impacted Florida farmer Sam Accursio this year.
There’s uncertainty regarding trade with China and the tariffs that are currently imposed on Chinese products that have prevented the country from purchasing U.S. pecans. This has led to extreme low prices this year for Southeast farmers.
Various Risks
There are various risks producers have to consider when planning for next year, says Adam Rabinowitz, Assistant Professor and Extension Economist at Auburn University.
“There clearly are a lot of uncertainties as we move forward into 2021. 2020 was a very challenging year as everybody knows from a lot of different standpoints with things that we have experienced that we have not felt before in agriculture as well. That just adds to the uncertainty moving forward,” Rabinowitz said.
“We still have a pandemic, as we see now cases rising and what impact that will have. We saw supply chain disruptions that occurred at the beginning of the year.
“We’ve seen net farm income continue to drop with the exception of government payments that have helped really to sustain it. There have been two rounds of the Coronavirus Food Assistance Program (CFAP) that have helped really alleviate some of the market issues.”
CFAP 2 Deadline
Producers have until Dec. 11 to submit their CFAP 2 applications. The program is open to growers of specialty crops, including fruits, vegetables, tree nuts, honey, horticulture and maple sap.
Administration Change
The uncertainty is magnified in 2021 because the country will transition from the Trump Administration to the Biden administration. What is the future of trade negotiations and the tariffs that are currently on Chinese goods?
“We do know that we have the trade negotiations that are still ongoing, regardless of who is in the White House. That’s still going to be an ongoing process,” Rabinowitz said.
“There are still the tariffs that the U.S. has put on Chinese products and other products with other countries in retaliation that has occurred likewise for U.S. exports going overseas. What happens to that is still an unknown. We’ve certainly seen China increase their purchasing of U.S. agricultural products this year, including getting into markets they have not been in before. That’s certainly promising.
“This Phase One agreement that we’re under right now with China where we essentially laid out a two-year plan, so what is the future beyond that and will they still be able to meet the first year goals plus an increase in second year goals? It’s still up in the air.”
Citrus fruit on trees in orange groves. Photo taken 06-22-18.
(UF/IFAS) — University of Florida citrus researchers continue to be sought out as partners in ground-breaking research projects to fight Huanglongbing, also known as citrus greening disease.
The National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA), part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), recently awarded nearly $4.5 million in grants to UF Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences faculty to find novel ways to fight the disease.
But UF/IFAS researchers are serving leadership roles in four other multi-million-dollar grants awarded to colleague institutions from across the nation. Collectively, these projects provide an aggressive, integrative strategy to finding sustainable solutions in the fight against citrus greening.
Cultural and Genetic Approaches
Ute Albrecht, amdas Kanissery and Sarah Strauss, assistant professors at the UF/IFAS Southwest Florida Research and Education Center (SWFREC) are working with University of California-Riverside on a $10 million grant to examine root decline associated with HLB-affected trees.
UF/IFAS will receive $2,240,000 over five years. Strauss, Albrecht and Kanissery will conduct large-scale field trials, working with Florida commercial citrus growers to explore the efficacy of using cover crops and soil amendments and the interaction with rootstock to improve soil and root health in newly planted and established groves. The project will also examine the impact of cultural practices like herbicide application on soil health and tree productivity.
Evaluation, Validation of Novel, HLB-Resistant or Tolerant Citrus Hybrid Scion Cultivars
Ute Albrecht and Zhengfei Guan, an associate professor at the UF/IFAS Gulf Coast Research and Education Center will work with University of California-Riverside, Texas A&M, and Washington State University, and USDA ARS on a $4.6 million project to test and deliver novel, HLB resistant/tolerant, non-transgenic, and commercially acceptable citrus scion cultivars to citrus industries. The scion cultivars will be tested in field trials, working with commercial citrus growers, to assess HLB resistance/tolerance and whether they produce fruit with acceptable fruit quality.
USDA Agricultural Research Service (ARS)– Coordinated Agricultural Projects (CAP)therapeutic molecule evaluation and field delivery pipeline for solutions to HLB
Lorenzo Rossi, an assistant professor at the UF/IFAS Indian River Research and Education Center (IRREC), and Jawwad Quershi, an assistant professor at UF/IFAS SWFREC, will collaborate with the USDA ARS on a $9,380,000, multi-state grant, examining different ways to deliver therapeutic growing methods to citrus growers. Rossi will manage greenhouse and field studies aimed to evaluate HLB-therapeutic molecules’ effects on root and plant physiology, with the final goal to identify the most cost-effective strategy to deliver these molecules to growers. Qureshi will lead UF’s outreach efforts with growers and the other institutions involved in the project. UF/IFAS will receive $1,334,252 over five years for this work.
The lead institution is the USDA ARS located in Fort Pierce, FL and the project involves several USDA ARS facilities (Ithaca NY, Wapato WA, Albany CA, and Dawson GA), as well as, public institutions: Indian River State College in Florida, the University of Florida and the University of California, and private companies in California and Florida.
This project has also been designated as a Center of Excellence. The designation means the technology used in the project has the potential to transform rural agriculture, advances technologies for therapeutic molecule production beyond control of citrus greening to diseases in other crops, humans and other animals, coordinates activities across several national citrus greening research programs and will include community participation in evaluation of HLB therapeutics.
The University of Florida Food and Resource Economics Department estimates between $85 million and $320 million in agricultural losses and damages stemming from Tropical Storm Eta.
Court
Christa Court, assistant professor of regional economics, said the storm’s timing was significant since it impacted Florida’s vegetable crops two weeks before Thanksgiving.
“I know that we grow a lot of the vegetables and things like sweet potatoes that do go into a Thanksgiving meal here in Florida. We grow those fresh market vegetables. The timing is not good, especially for those producers that do rely on that market this time of the year,” Court said.
Additional Information Needed
Court said her department will be able to narrow the scope of the damage as additional information comes in from farmers and county agents.
Farmer’s Perspective
Florida farmer Sam Accursio reported that Eta devastated his squash crop. He farms in Homestead, Florida. He estimated an extra 10 inches of rain from the storm, which followed an already wet couple of months. Squash melted on the plant.
“The further north we went, the more likely it was that we were hearing everything is okay. But in that south Florida area we were hearing some significant losses from the sugar cane and vegetable fields,” Court said. “We spent some time on the team mapping things out a little bit. In one of our maps, we do what we typically do and overlaid the storm path with the agricultural lands to determine what was impacted. It was a large part of the peninsula impacted by tropical storm force winds. But we started to hear from a lot of those counties; all good, not too much more than what a Florida producer is used to dealing with from a strong rain storm.
“But there were several parts of the state that already had saturated soil and took a much higher precipitation amount during the storm event. When we overlaid the precipitation with information we had on agricultural lands, it was clear that the areas that were experiencing higher wind speeds were not the same as the areas that were experiencing high precipitation amounts. The really high precipitation was in that South Florida, Palm Beach, Broward, Miami-Dade County (areas). There was some locally heavy precipitation around the Tampa Bay and Sarasota areas as well.”
According to the South Florida Pest and Disease Hotline, worm pressure has been high in some parts of the EAA (Everglades Agricultural Area). Producers and scouts report finding loopers, bean leaf rollers and armyworms in beans. Loopers and armyworms are very common in lettuce plantings.
Across Southwest Florida, worm pressure has been low to moderate. Scouts are finding mostly southern armyworms with some loopers, fall and beet armyworms and few fruitworms. Melonworms have been common in cucumber and squash.
In the Manatee/Hillsborough area, worm pressure has subsided, but growers are still finding mostly low levels of hornworms along with southern and beet armyworms.
Reports from Homestead indicate that melonworms are present in some specialty cucurbits and squash.
On the East Coast, respondents report that worms are around, and pressure remains low to moderate depending on the location.
LAKE ALFRED, Fla. — A new opportunity for Florida’s small and medium-sized produce farmers will become a reality with the support of a U.S. Department of Agriculture Food Safety Outreach Program (FSOP) grant designed to produce and provide easy-to-access training in safe food production methods to underserved farmers.
Faculty from the University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences and Florida A&M are partnering to serve this audience with online programming that will support them being viable and competitive in the marketplace.
Florida ranks second in the nation for vegetable production, behind California, and produces 63% of the nation’s total citrus according to the Florida Agricultural Statistics Service. From 2012 to 2017, Florida continued to increase its number of small farms by 20% to 14,072 small farms, which represents 29.6% of all commercial operations per the USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS).
Florida remains fifth in the nation in the number of beginning farmers (31%; USDA NASS, 2019). Yet, this audience struggles to participate in educational workshops that can support their success and provide needed information on how to implement safe food production best practices into their operations.
It’s not for a lack of interest, said Michelle Danyluk, UF/IFAS professor of food science and human nutrition and one of the grant’s leaders.
“Many small and beginning farmers often work off-farm to support their families and simply cannot afford the time to attend traditional day-long workshops,” said Danyluk.
According to 2019 figures from the USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service, beginning farm operators in Florida are more likely (67%) to work off the farm in addition to managing their farm than their established counterparts (45%). The need to provide workshops remotely is further heightened during the Covid-19 pandemic.
The successful completion of this community outreach project is anticipated to generate more than 20 remote learning modules and eight instructor-led webinar workshops. These materials will target underserved operators of small and medium-sized farms, beginning farmers and socially disadvantaged farmers.
These remote learning experiences will give participants a new portal to access food safety training information important for their own understanding and for use in training employees and other farm workers. They will also have an improved understanding of basic food safety principles and practices that support the production of safe food, as well as Food Safety Modernization Act compliance, through the visualization of key food safety issues discovered through video demonstrations and other presentations captured in online content and live streamed.
Specific topics include:
Providing food safety training to employees
Food safety recordkeeping
Practicing Food Safety During Harvesting
Evaluating Surface Water and Distribution Systems
Sanitation Monitoring and Verification
The $319,273 grant is part of the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture’s Food Safety Outreach Program (FSOP) for food safety education, training, and technical assistance projects that addresses the needs of owners and operators of small to mid-sized farms, beginning farmers, socially-disadvantaged farmers, small processors, small fresh fruit and vegetable merchant wholesalers, food hubs, farmers’ markets, and others. FSOP helps the development of new food safety education and outreach programs in local communities and expand upon existing food safety education and outreach programs that address the needs of small, specialized audiences whose education needs have not previously been adequately addressed. FSOP helps all types of farmers and businesses that have the education and tools they need to be successful and comply with the Food Safety Modernization Act.
