California Citrus Mutual Estimates Navel Orange Crop to Hit 86 Million Cartons
EXETER, CA - California Citrus Mutual (CCM) announced that the California Navel Orange Objective Measurement Report is anticipating 86 million 40 pound cartons of navels, or 3.4 billion pounds of Navel Oranges. 83 million of those cartons are expected to come out of the Central Valley of the state.
Calculated on 2,000 acres fewer than last year, the report was compiled by the Agricultural Statistic Service. Fruit count per tree in District One is up 19% from last year at 412, and 18.5% higher than the 336 fruit average per tree over the last five years. According to a release, these number were collected and projected based on:
- Random sampling of the number of fruit per tree
- Fruit size
- Combined with historical information
- Using statistical formulas to produce the estimate
The CASS reports that District One is comprised of three counties in the Central Valley, and represents an 8.5% increase over California’s harvest last year of seventy-six million cartons.
The big variable, according to what CCM gathered from growers, will be the number of acres, thousands of which were removed due to the drought. According to the report, the “two thousand acre reduction” used by CASS is probably conservative. This would mean that the crop will come in below this estimate.
“Growers, packing house fieldmen, and shippers that CCM spoke with prior to today's release generally believed that the crop was at least the same as last year and probably bigger than last year,” the organization stated in the release, reporting that fruit size this year is to be larger, attributed to timely rainfall and good growing conditions after last spring’s petal fall.
Early rains this fall could result in additional growth that would equate to more cartons.
The average fruit measured 2.248 in diameter as of September 1st, CCM says, just above the 2.230 average over the last five seasons. While external quality was reported to be very good, early rains falling could add to the projected growth and produce more cartons than originally anticipates.
Varieties included in the report are:
- Conventional Navel Oranges
- Organic Navel Oranges
- Specialty Navel Oranges
Harvest is currently expected to being early October.
