A tour of the research vineyard at the Clanton Research and Extension Center in Chilton County at the Alabama WIneries and Grape Growers Association meeting in September 2019. Grapes are grown by Elina Coneva and the staff at the CREC. Grape varieties are developed by Dr. Andy Walker, a grape breeder at UC Davis.
By Clint Thompson
The time is now for grape producers to tissue sample their crop, says Phil Brannen, University of Georgia Cooperative Extension fruit disease specialist. In doing so, growers can make any modifications to impact this year’s crop.
“If you go ahead and get the sample now, you can do something about it. You can actually impact this year’s crop,” Brannen said. “If you wait until the (veraison) which is when the grapes start turning color, which is the other time you can sample, that is much less meaningful for this year. It may indicate more with what you need to think about with fertilization for the following year. For right now, you can get information on what you put out in the way of micronutrients or macronutrients to impact this year’s crop.
“(Tissue sampling) gives you a really good idea about what’s going on, specifically in the tissues of the plant. It’s a better indicator than even a soil sample would be, of what you actually need. You still need to get soil samples. I’m not saying don’t get them. But the tissue samples are much more valuable to you.”
How To Sample
Brannen said the tissue samples can be taken from the petioles or the leaf itself. For wine grapes, vinefera grapes and hybrid grapes, take petiole samples. For muscadine producers, you need to sample from the leaves.
“Generally, you don’t want to take more than two per plant. You want to do it randomly throughout a vineyard. You’re really talking about a single block, so it would be one variety that you would sample,” Brannen said. “You can’t really go across different varieties and get a good understanding. Each sample has to be a variety within a specific area. That could be up to about 10 acres for a sample.”
Brannen estimates that a total of 50 to 75 petiole samples is needed.
Grapes will be harvested in early August through September.
North Carolina State small fruits Extension specialist Mark Hoffmann confirmed that grapes in his state experienced frost damage during last weekend’s cooler temperatures. The state’s strawberries appear to have escaped damage.
Hoffmann
“We got lucky for the most part and didn’t see a lot of damage in strawberries. Still a pretty strong strawberry season,” Hoffmann said. “But we had more frost damage in the mountains on grapes. I expect some crop loss this year due to frost damage on grapes.”
Freeze warnings and frost advisories were issued for different parts of North Carolina. Heading into the weekend, Hoffmann expected that strawberry growers would implement row covers on their crop. Row covers help reduce radiation in the field and provide adequate frost protection from temperatures in the 30s. Strawberry production is currently in mid-season. If row covers were not used, the low temperatures could have harmed the open blossoms that are still on plants, which lead to late-season fruit. Temperatures could also harm the actual fruits in popcorn stage and other green fruits.
He also confirmed this was the third frost event for the state’s grape crop. It was especially vulnerable this time since it is late in the season.
Hoffmann estimates that more than 1 million bottles of wine are produced every year in the state and there are 1,500 acres of grape in state.
Potential freezing temperatures this weekend in North Carolina could impact strawberry production. Unless farmers utilize row covers for protection.
According to Mark Hoffmann, North Carolina State small fruits Extension specialist, row covers, which help reduce radiation in the field should provide adequate frost protection from temperatures in the 30s on Saturday and Sunday.
“It looks like in most areas, what’s happening is that if the wind slows down Saturday night to Sunday and we have no cloud cover, that’s probably the most critical time. When it’s Sunday morning and still dark and there’s a lot of radiation, that’s probably the most critical time. With row covers, they will be safe,” Hoffmann said.
Low Temps
According to weather.com, temperatures are forecast to drop to as low as 39 degrees on Sunday morning in Raleigh, North Carolina. Temperatures that low are abnormal this late into May for that part of the world.
“It’s pretty late. I wasn’t expecting it. We were not recommending taking the covers out of the field because we had seen such odd weather patterns this year. It’s very, very late,” Hoffmann said. “Most of the growers had taken their row covers out of the field. They have to put them back in over this weekend.”
Strawberry production is currently in mid-season. If row covers are not used, the low temperatures could harm the open blossoms that are still on plants, which lead to late-season fruit. Temperatures could also harm the actual fruits in popcorn stage and other green fruits.
The drop in degrees this weekend could also impact the state’s grape production.
“This is the third frost event to affect grapes this year already. Usually they grow out of it. This is pretty late in the season again. Unless you have a sprinkler system or wind machine, there’s not a lot you can do, unfortunately,” Hoffmann said.
File photo shows muscadine grapes. North Carolina producers need to be ready for colder temperatures.
North Carolina strawberry and grape producers need to be wary of colder temperatures this week, according Mark Hoffmann, North Carolina State Small Fruits Extension Specialist, in his message to producers.
Temperatures will fall significantly this week, with a slight chance of rain in North Carolina on Friday and Saturday, and clouds coming in from the Northwest. These weather conditions will lead to minimum temperatures below 40 degrees during the night from Saturday to Sunday in the mountains and wide areas of the Piedmont.
Hoffmann said to check your local weather if you are in an area that can get a lot of frost. If there is a chance of frost, please use row covers to protect your blooms from Saturday to Sunday.
South Carolina’s muscadine harvest season is still five months away, but the crop looks ripe for a productive season. That optimistic outlook comes from Bruce McLean, Jr., a Clemson (S.C.) Extension area commercial horticulture agent for Dillon County, Horry County, Marion County and Malboro County.
“I’ve been out a few times, walking vineyards and really looking at them. A lot of the muscadines in my area are more juice and wine type of muscadines, the Carlos or Noble type of varieties or Doreen. Those are looking really, really good,” McLean said. “They’re really just budding out now, just producing floral buds. They’ve been leafed down for a couple of weeks now. So far, they look really nice.”
McLean said this time of year is designed to help farmers capitalize on their fertility programs. He works with a lot of them 1-on-1 to see what tweaks can be made to their spray programs as well.
He estimates that there are approximately 100 acres of muscadine vineyards that are produced in South Carolina. These vineyards are mostly 15 to 20-acre vineyards.
“It’s definitely something that a lot of growers are wanting to be expand out on,” he added. “We’re also trying to help find them markets. And maybe looking at fresh markets to complement as far as the juice and wine market as well.”
Muscadine harvest in South Carolina is generally reserved for September.
“It’s still mighty early. Anything can happen. Right now, we’re just looking at spray programs to really protect the crop as much as possible and maximize yields,” McLean said.
A tour of the research vineyard at the Clanton Research and Extension Center in Chilton County at the Alabama WIneries and Grape Growers Association meeting in September 2019. Grapes are grown by Elina Coneva and the staff at the CREC. Grape varieties are developed by Dr. Andy Walker, a grape breeder at UC Davis.
By Clint Thompson
University of Georgia Cooperative Extension Fruit Disease Specialist Phil Brannen believes grape producers can better protect their crop against powdery mildew disease and preserve essential fungicides with sulfur applications.
Brannen believes sulfur is a viable alternative that growers need to utilize, especially since resistance has developed in two different classes of chemicals. Those classes are the quinone outside inhibitor (QoI) class and the demethylation inhibitor (DMI) class. Growers risk disease resistance developing in the succinate dehydrogenase inhibitors (SDHI) class of fungicides as well.
“That’s one reason I’m encouraging people to incorporate more sulfur in their programs. It’s just to try to take less pressure off this one remaining chemical that works really well. We can save it for the more critical time we need a really active powdery mildew material,” Brannen said.
He said growers need to be smart when applying sulfur and be mindful of its ability to burn the plants.
“The main issue we have with it is not to humans or the environment, it’s actually to the plant itself,” Brannen said. “If you put out sulfur on a really hot day, especially if there’s a lot of high humidity or the foliage is wet, it will burn the grapes severely. It can actually cause significant damage to the plant itself. That’s one reason people have avoided using it on vinifora grapes.”
Brannen recommends that producers apply sulfur either later in the evening or at night when temperatures are lower. That’s when there’s little risk to the plant.
But growers should also be mindful of sulfur’s harmful potential to themselves.
“It’s not dangerous in the sense that it won’t kill you. You do have to realize it will burn your eyes. You go into a vineyard and if you’re doing tying operations and things like that, and if you spray sulfur and rub your eyes, your eyes are going to burn,” Brannen said. “It’s not going to put your eye out. But it’s going to be something that you have to be aware of. It’s not as user friendly as some of these other materials.”
Powdery mildew’s impact
Powdery mildew disease is problematic for grape producers because of its ability to infect almost any part of the plant. It can cause leaves to desiccate, become dry and fall off.
The major concern is when powdery mildew infects the fruit itself. A limited amount on fruit will not allow sugars to come up to the fruit. If there’s no sugars in the berries, it leads to an inability to make good wine.
“It essentially renders the fruit into something you can not use. You can’t allow powdery mildew on the fruit at all,” Brannen said.
Last weekend’s cold temperatures may have impacted North Carolina’s grape production this season. According to Mark Hoffmann, North Carolina State small fruits Extension specialist, he should know more in the upcoming days about the severity of any frost damage that may have occurred throughout the state.
“The WineGrowers Association, they have a survey out to assess how much damage people are seeing. It’s going to take a couple of days before we know that,” Hoffmann said. “I know in the mountains they didn’t get a lot of frost. They didn’t get a lot of damage because they didn’t have a lot of shoot growth. In the lower areas, like the Yadkin Valley, they had shoot growth already two weeks ago. Pretty sure they got a lot of damage.”
He said on Friday, April 10, temperatures dropped into the 30s in the Yadkin Valley, outside of the mountains in the Piedmont area. To know how to manage frost damage in grapes, see Hoffmann tips on frost management in grapes.
“There’s so many other things in North Carolina that could impact yield production. If you get a lot of damage and you have to remove the shoot, then yes it will (impact yields). If you only have mild damage, then you might be okay,” Hoffmann said.
Grape production in North Carolina
Hoffmann said producers started harvesting two weeks ago in the eastern part of North Carolina. But the whole state should be picking at this point. Depending on how weather cooperates over the next month will impact how big the harvest window will be this year for grape producers.
“If we have a good year, we can go ’til the end of June. In a bad year, it can be over in like mid-May already,” Hoffmann said. “If it gets humid pretty soon and if we get a large, heavy rain event, which happened two years ago in May; it was in 2018 I believe, in the second week in May, we had a large rain event and then the third week we had another large rain event that basically shut it down.
“I would say April and the first two weeks of May, for sure, and then after that, I hope we have two to three more weeks.”
Hoffmann estimates that more than 1 million bottles of wine are produced every year in the state and there are 1,500 acres of grape production in state.
“Ten years ago, it was much smaller than that. We’re growing a lot. We have about 180 wineries which produces wine. The last 10 years it grew about 50%. It’s a pretty large industry,” Hoffmann said.
Submitted by Gene McAvoy, Regional Vegetable Extension Agent IV Emeritus with UF/IFAS
“Up to the end of Feb our growers were having a banner year and it looked like this season would be one of those homeruns that come around every 5-6 years.”
Here is a report that I prepared on the state of S Florida ag and shared with officials. (Long read but may shed some light on how COVID-19 is impacting agriculture in our area.)
Markets
On Tuesday, March 24, a local broker says, everything changed. From brokers, orders stopped and everything got quiet. On Wednesday, March 25, it got super quiet.
Since then tomato volumes are down 85%, green beans are like 50% and cabbage is like 50%.
R.C. Hatton has plowed under 100 acres of green beans, around 2 million pounds, and 60 acres of cabbage, or 5 million pounds.
Florida’s tomato growers target 80% of their production to restaurants and other food service companies, rather than to supermarkets. In this sector, growers are walking away from big portions of their crop.
Tony DiMare estimates that by the end of the growing season, about 10 million pounds of his tomatoes will go unpicked.
Some crops like potatoes and oranges are faring well, whileother produce isn’t selling like it used to.
With a lot of people staying home and buying mostly comfort foods, products like peppers, tomatoes and cucumbers have actually slowed down incrementally,” said Chuck Weisinger, president of Weis-Buy Farms, Inc.
“The biggest challenge we have right now is getting the stores to start buying,” said John Stanford, farm manager at Frey Farms.
As you know. produce is highly perishable and three weeks into this, many companies around Immokalee, Florida have already had to empty their coolers and dump produce. One dumped 20,000 pounds a day last week, let that sink in… 20,000 pounds of tomatoes a day. They dumped a total of 100,000 pounds so far. This is from one farm.
Three weeks in, most farms have exercised triage dumping and emptying coolers and are terminating fields for which they have no foreseeable markets. They are concentrating on maintaining fields that they still have demand for, unfortunately, depending on the crop – this is only 20-50% of the total planted.
Impacts on Ranchers
The cash market and futures prices are lower than anyone can remember. One local rancher sold calves this week and averaged $250 per head at the Arcadia auction barn. A few weeks ago he would have received $450 per head average, and that constitutes below breakeven.
In normal times, strategy would be to hold calves until the crisis is over, and hope prices will take an upswing. But there is huge uncertainty about how long this will last. A major compounding problem is the dry conditions, and lack of reserve forage. These weather patterns would normally dictate early weaning of calves. Hay costs, when available, and low market prices are a formula for hardship.
The extended impact on ranchers will be the cows not breeding back on schedule. Holding calves longer in hot and dry conditions puts a strain on a cow’s reproductive system. This has been well-documented by University of Florida researchers.
Many growers are exploring alternative methods of moving product.
Sam S. Accursio and Sons Farms’ in Homestead packing house opened direct sales to consumers, selling boxes at $10 in each of the past two weekends. They had cars stretched for half a mile in front of the packing house and were able to move 120,000 pounds of Redland-raised squash, tomatoes, beans and cukes. They also partnered with a farmer out of Mount Dora, Florida who had 30,000 flats of unsold blueberries and sold these at 12 pints for $20. Similar efforts were conducted by Alderman Farms in Bonita Beach, Florida, Farmers Alliance in Immokalee and others.
Martin County, Florida opened a pop-up drive-thru market that saw 500 cars in one day. Traditional commercial farms in South Florida have been overwhelmed by the support for the sales at their packinghouses – all fruit that would have otherwise gone unsold if waiting on traditional markets to purchase.
Growers are still concerned that a large amount of produce seen in the supermarket comes from Mexico.
According to Bill Braswell, since March 1, the start of the Florida blueberry season, Florida has produced 6.1 million pounds through last Thursday April 2. In that same time period, Mexico has imported 17.4 million pounds into the U.S., according to a USDA report. Mexico market price is $12 for a 6-ounce flat delivered to Chicago which translates to $2.60 per pound.
Labor
Growers are taking aggressive steps to protect workers from COVID-19, including keeping truckers separate from on-farm labor.
They have been taking advantage of training resources and posters supplied by IFAS Extension and others.
Agents have also shared information on essential services exemption and supplying growers with template essential services exemption letters to facilitate movement of their essential staff and labor.
Labor shortages – reports indicate that COVID-19 has delayed the U.S. government’s processing of H-2A work visas. This will impact growers in central and north Florida and up the coast.
Food banks
Last week, growers in Immokalee alone donated more than 3 million pounds of vegetables to Harry Chapin food bank, overwhelming their ability to store, transport and distribute the produce – they had to call a halt.
Farm Share, which partners with more than 2,000 food pantries, churches, schools and other nonprofits throughout Florida, is running at maximum capacity, despite having 25 refrigerated trucks, six warehouses of between 10,000 to 35,000 square feet and 40 to 50 drop sites from Jacksonville, Florida to Florida City, Florida. They usually help more than seven million pounds of food reach the hungry and now are faced with moving a lot more.
Over the past two weeks, Wish Farms has donated 220,000 pounds of fresh strawberries — equivalent to 241 pallets or nine semi-trailer loads — to feeding Tampa Bay.
Growers are having a tough time adapting because everything is happening so quick. Faced with a highly perishable product, growers are struggling to survive right now, with picking, packing and shipping everything that they can. Because of the coronavirus, things have changed. Buyers are demanding tight security, heavier sanitation, distancing and more.
We have heard many ideas and suggestions from the public and even local officials – what many people fail to realize is that picking, packing, cooling, storing and transporting vegetables costs money, and growers who have already lost millions of dollars are understandably reluctant to throw good money after bad. It also costs money to maintain fields with no hope of sales in sight. Growers are disking up fields and maintaining just what they feel they have markets for. Unfortunately, this is only about 20% to 30% of the total acreage. Each acre of tomatoes costs $10,000 to $12,000 to grow and $5,000 to $6,000 to pick and pack. Unmaintained fields rapidly succumb to pests and diseases and soon become a breeding ground threatening the health of nearby fields that growers are trying to save for their remaining markets.
It is not only veggies, as of yesterday about 7.7 pounds of milk has been dumped by one Central Florida co-op (there are a few in Florida). Milk is sold by the pound so that is 900,000 gallons.
While I don’t have the exact amount from the other co-op I would expect their numbers to match ours in north Central Florida and South Georgia. Unfortunately, we can easily say that 10 million pounds of milk has been dumped throughout Florida.
There are efforts to help farmers all over our state. In the dairy industry, there is a grassroots group of passionate producers, processors, promotion people, school representatives and Extension agents trying to get more milk moving. This group includes people from Florida and Georgia, that in normal times might view each other as the competition (different co-ops and different promotion boards). These efforts range from delivering school lunches, buying and delivering milk to food banks and those in need; contacting schools to increase their milk in each meal, contacting legislators to allow whole milk in school lunches (we need help with this), and asking stores to stop limiting the purchase of milk.
People really have no concept of the amount of food we are taking about – Immokalee alone ships approximately 400 to 500 semis of vegetables a day from March through mid-May. This is 15,750,000 pounds of vegetables headed to market every day. Add to this Belle Glade, Palm Beach Co, Homestead and the amounts are staggering. I know of one grower in Belle Glade who is disking up 1 million pounds of green beans every three days.
South Florida vegetable growers supply more than 150 million people in the eastern U.S., from Miami to Chicago, from late October to mid-May.
Here is a resource a producer may be interested in sharing – this is a clearing house for finding food – donating food etc.
(HCCGA) — FDACS has created the attached form for producers to fill out with their product availability. Once submitted, FDACS will utilize to forward to their Fresh From Florida contacts, as well as the Florida Department of Corrections, food banks and make connections with other State Departments of Agriculture in hopes of providing market opportunities to move product during the Coronavirus pandemic.
