By Clint Thompson
One Florida tomato grower’s assessment of this year’s crop focused on the plethora of challenges that state’s producers had to contend with. Whether it was from hurricanes in the fall to unfavorable markets, the challenges were on multiple fronts and impacted production for Tony DiMare and other Florida producers.
He discussed this year’s crop in an interview with AgNet Media at the Florida Tomato Field Day at the UF/IFAS Gulf Coast Research and Education Center on May 15.
“Going back to the start of the season in October, it’s been very challenging with the three hurricanes that we had in Florida. In a lot of the cases, it decimated a lot of the crop, in particular the west coast of Florida in the early fall,” said DiMare, president of DiMare Fresh. “The winter deal, we had excellent growing weather with excellent yields. Unfortunately, with that, we did not have very good markets. In fact, the markets have been pretty demoralized up until the last week or 10 days. Markets have been a real challenge most of the season because of oversupply, primarily coming from Mexico.
“We’re currently in the spring season on the west coast of Florida in the Palmetto/Ruskin area. We’ve had an abnormally, very dry growing season which has created some problems with the heat and dry weather as far as fruit set and everything.”
Average Crop in Palmetto/Ruskin
DiMare characterized the crop season in the Palmetto/Ruskin area as “average.” It’s a much different outcome than last year.
“Last year we had an above average, and I would even call it a bumper crop. As they say in farming, no two seasons are the same,” DiMare said.
Florida growers are expected to finish harvesting this year’s crop by the middle of June.