By Clint Thompson
Hurricane Milton delivered a blow to Florida’s strawberry industry when it moved through the state on Oct. 9. One grower is hopeful for financial assistance to offset growing input costs into this year’s crop.
“We’re roughly on average $3,500 an acre over-invested into this crop, just from the cleanup efforts and redoing things. We’re more invested than we need to be this year, and all that money that we’re invested in is money that we take to use for labor until we get to that net positive situation. Now everybody’s scrambling trying to figure it out,” said Matt Parke, farm manager of Parkesdale Farms in Plant City, Florida.
“We’re hoping for Sen. (Rick) Scott to get that block grant up in Washington D.C. to help us out. We’re going to fall on tough times trying to make sure we get enough money to pay our labor.”
Parke said 90 of his 320 acres had been planted prior to Milton’s arrival. His team had to reset 30 acres, re-lay 150 acres of plastic and pin back down 100 acres of plastic.
Excessive Rains
It was the most impactful hurricane Parke has experienced during planting season, if not ever. The excessive rains made it a nightmare scenario for growers.
“Here in North Plant City, we had 20 to 24 inches of water in an eight-hour period,” Parke said. “We had water coming over hills. We had water we didn’t know where it had come from. I’ve been through a lot of hurricanes, and I’ve been through hurricanes that were windier, but this one had so much water with it.
“We can handle water. In this area we can get an inch of rain in 30 minutes, and two or three hours later there’s not a puddle on the ground. We drain really well. Good grief, that much water in that short of time and we were already saturated, so it had nowhere to go.”