You can taste it now. A refreshing scoop of vanilla ice cream or milkshake can be tasty and help cool you down in the sweltering Florida heat.
To meet growing consumer demand for vanilla, Alan Chambers, a UF/IFAS tropical plant geneticist, is studying which beans to grow in Florida, and when and where to grow them. Chambers also wants to help Florida farmers diversify the crops they can grow. He’s been testing various vanilla species in his labs and fields at the UF/IFAS Tropical Research and Education Center in Homestead, Florida.
Over the next year and a half, Chambers plans to deliver vanilla plants to much of southeast and southwest Florida, where residents, UF/IFAS scientists and Extension faculty will try to grow them.
All those growing vanilla plants will monitor them for growth and survivability, Chambers said.
“The coming winter will tell us a lot about how temperature impacts the vanilla vines,” he said. “Those participating in the study will be able to keep the plants. It’s bringing together some great people — from state Extension specialists to Extension agents to active members of our communities – for a common cause. We are also breeding new vanilla cultivars focusing on yield, bean length and flavor.”
Another impetus for Chambers’ research? The United States relies on Madagascar for the bean. Over 80% of the world’s vanilla is produced in that country, off the east coast of Africa. America is the biggest importer of vanilla beans from Madagascar, and once in America, those beans are further processed into vanilla extract. As a spice, it is the second most expensive and is the world’s most popular flavor.
Chambers is focusing the next step of his research in southern Florida. He and his research team plan to bring vanilla plants to the state’s southernmost counties – including Charlotte, Collier, Lee, Sarasota, Broward, Miami-Dade, Monroe, Martin, Palm Beach and St. Lucie.
In addition to Extension agents in those counties trying to grow vanilla, scientists at the Southwest Florida, Indian River and Mid-Florida research and education centers will see if they can cultivate vanilla at on-site plots.
Twyla Leigh, director of UF/IFAS Extension Collier County and two of her agents will help grow the vanilla at the Extension campus in Naples and in residential backyards.
“This opportunity will test the possibility and conditions of growing a ‘value-added’ and potentially cost-effective/sustainable secondary crop for our small farmers in Collier County,” Leigh said.
“As a longtime orchid hobbyist and gardener, I am thrilled to be involved in this project that will benefit agriculture in Southwest Florida,” Leigh said. “I sent some cuttings to Dr. Chambers and, through DNA testing, learned the species of my vanilla plants was vanilla pompona. My first vanilla cuttings were gifted to me by my Master Gardener mother.”
Like Leigh, David Outerbridge, director of UF/IFAS Extension Lee County is a hobbyist gardener, and he takes a personal interest in growing vanilla.
“The potential to contribute to development and promotion of a new crop for Lee County and South Florida is phenomenal,” Outerbridge said.
Chambers is counting on residents’ help, too.
Some were selected to grow the vanilla plants based on their level of excitement and their support for his research. Some were picked based on their location, so UF/IFAS can spread out across counties.
“These people will grow the plants and become part of our community network of citizen scientists,” he said.
Chambers acknowledged the help of the UF/IFAS Dean for Extension and Dean for Research offices. Combined, the two offices funded the vanilla outreach program through a grant from the Support for Emerging Enterprise Development Integration Teams (SEEDIT) program.
Florida’s hot and dry weather this winter and spring has impacted its tropical fruits, according to Jonathan Crane, University of Florida tropical fruit crop specialist. From lychees to avocados and mangos, none were immune to high temperatures over the past few months.
Lychees
Lychee requires exposure to cooler temperatures. If they don’t get much of that, they don’t bloom very well.
“The fact that we’ve had very warm winter; November, December and January, this has affected the natural bloom for lychee. They don’t flower much when that happens, when it’s too warm for too long. The fruit set on that is down, not everywhere, but I’m talking about in South Dade, mostly,” Crane said. “North of us, some of the other counties, Martin, Palm Beach and others, they get more cool weather. So, they’re probably okay, I’m not sure. Certainly, in Dade County, it’s been too warm of a winter to have good fruit set for lychee.”
Avocados and Mangos
As for mangos and avocados, they require a period when they’re not growing or are just dormant.
Avocados
“For some of our avocados, the bloom and fruit set was affected by the very high temperatures; the dry climate, low humidity, lack of rainfall even if you were irrigating. This has affected some of the fruit set on some of the early varieties of avocados,” Crane said. “It is not everywhere and in not all varieties and not in all locations but on some of them. There was some effect on the avocado bloom.
“(For mangos) it looked like we were going to have a good bloom but it’s been sort of spotty. We sort of had two or three smaller blooms. Most of what I see out there didn’t set all that well. Not exactly sure what’s going on with that because usually they set pretty well. This year, the set hasn’t been as good as previous years, and I suspect again it’s because of the warm weather. They do require a period of no growth in order to flower. If we stay warm, then what happens is the flowers are mixed in with leaves and it’s generally not as good.”
High Winds
Mangos
Crane also attributes high winds to a low fruit set.
“Another thing that happens is if it’s very hot and dry, especially if it’s windy … just the banging of the flowers into the leaves and stems knocks the flower buds off and knocks the small fruit off,” Crane said.
Crane said lychees will be harvested beginning in June. Avocados and mangos will begin to be harvested at the end of May.
Picture submitted by Alan Chambers/UF: Shows a collection of different mangoes.
By Clint Thompson
Florida mango lovers will soon be able to sample this year’s crop, according Alan Chambers, University of Florida Assistant Professor/Genetics and Breeding of Tropical Fruits.
“The mangoes are just beginning to ripen now,” he said. “Fresh mangoes from Florida will soon be available. We had multiple mango blooms this year in response to multiple cold spells. As a result, we have fruit at multiple maturity levels on the trees at the same time. This will complicate harvesting.”
Mangoes are grown commercially in Florida in Dade, Lee, and Palm Beach Counties, according to University of Florida/IFAS Extension. Mangoes are grown in tropical and subtropical lowlands throughout the world.
As part of his research responsibilities, Chambers focuses on the quality of the mango. He has mature trees established at the station in Homestead, Florida. He samples individual aroma compounds. He determines how sweet the fruit are, the size they are and how much they weigh. Its essential information for local growers who want to produce a desirable fruit for consumers.
“It really helps our growers who are looking for, ‘Which one should I grow? Which ones are the best that consumers like? Which ones are they willing to pay more for?’” Chambers said. “Most of the domestic mango industry is based on imports. In South Florida, there’s higher costs of production for land, inputs and labor. Our growers make their money based on specialty products, so offering something with a higher quality or that’s safer or that’s different than what you can get in the grocery store.”
Marketing for mangoes is mostly done locally. Chambers said some of the product does get sold and shipped up the east coast.
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.
