By Clint Thompson
Watermelon prices have not cooperated for Southeast growers looking to capitalize on their crop this summer. That’s a disheartening scenario for Georgia producers who are in the middle of their harvest season and will continue to be for a couple of more weeks.
Tim Coolong, associate professor in the University of Georgia College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, hopes prices will stabilize over these remaining days of harvest season.
“There’s a good bit of melons planted this year. Prices haven’t been great, so hopefully prices will stabilize as we get closer to the (July 4) holiday. Usually, like the last few weeks of June into the first week of July is the main part of our harvest window,” Coolong said. “The biggest hope would be that they went up. That doesn’t ever happen, so at least if they remain relatively stable, that’s better than the alternative.”
Georgia growers have had a history of targeting the week of July 4 as a time to sell much of their crop. It’s a holiday and people celebrate on vacations with a sweet watermelon or two. But the producers’ harvest window may be expanding.
“Over the years, I’ve noticed more and more Georgia farmers, it used to be July 4 and that was it. But now it seems more of them carry that market a little bit further. Certainly, it’s not late into the summer or anything like that, but they carry it a little further than the July 4 window,” Coolong said.
North Florida just concluded its harvest season, with watermelon harvests continuing in Georgia and the Carolinas. Production will continue up north in Indiana and Delaware.