Citrus Growers Needed for Survey Participation

Singerman

Ariel Singerman, University of Florida assistant professor, will be conducting his annual production cost survey for processed oranges grown in Southwest Florida. The survey will consist of grower meetings in two locations.

The first meeting will take place on May 18 at 9:00 a.m. at the Hendry County Extension Office (Dallas Townsend Ag Center) in LaBelle. To confirm your participation in the survey, contact Mongi Zekri, multi-county citrus Extension agent at maz@ufl.edu or (863) 674-4092, or Bernadette Rashford, GCGA director of administrative and membership services, at (239) 690-0281 or gulfcitrus@embarqmail.com.

On June 7 at noon, the second meeting will take place at the DeSoto County Extension Office in Arcadia. To attend, please call Steve Futch at (863) 956-8644 prior to June 5 to allow sufficient meals to be ordered from Slim’s BBQ.

Singerman will also be conducting a production cost survey of fresh grapefruit grown in the Indian River area. This survey will take place on May 22 at 10:00 a.m. at the U.S. Horticultural Research Laboratory in Fort Pierce.

Hamel

This will be the third year that Singerman has met with citrus growers to gather current production cost data. Ron Hamel, Gulf Citrus Growers Association (GCGA) executive vice president/general manager, says this “is even more important today for a multitude of reasons … including citrus grove valuations for ad valorem taxes. As our industry continues to adopt more technology, it is critical that accurate data is gathered and utilized at all levels of the decision-making process.”

Singerman hopes that growers of all sizes will participate in this year’s survey, which will be conducted electronically with the use of clickers. The survey is expected to take less than one hour to complete.