Satsuma mandarins are easily produced in the cold-hardy citrus region. But their lack of shelf life is causing multiple growers in the region, which includes North Florida and South Georgia, to pull trees in favor of something else.
Those growers includes Lindy Savelle, executive director of the Georgia Citrus Association. She’s removing 400 of 1,000 satsuma trees, or about 40% of her production.
“I think we’re up to eight growers, including myself, who are going to remove some of their satsuma trees,” said Savelle. “We’re doing it because we’re pivoting to an agritourism model. Some of the growers said, ‘I’m not going to get myself in a situation where I’ve got this overabundance.’ There’s no doubt that we can grow satsumas here, but they are one of the harder products to market, because you have a short window of opportunity from harvest to consumer. You’re working in about a 60-day window in a normal season.”
The past season was not a normal season because fruit matured later than normal. Maturity didn’t occur until Thanksgiving or early December. So, instead of a 60-day window, growers were faced with a 30-day window. It was “too much, too fast,” Savelle said, and the market could not absorb it.
“We need to develop more markets while looking for other products that we can grow here in Georgia,” she said.
However, Savelle said growers should be cautious of producing too much citrus that might mature at the wrong time.
“People are saying that maybe we need to be growing a product that will hold onto the tree for a longer period of time, so our window of opportunity to market is wider. But you have to be careful because you don’t want to be growing these products that fall into the period of freezing,” Savelle warned. “Some of these products that we grow — grapefruit, Tango, shiranui — don’t necessarily come ripe until January. You don’t want to catch yourself in a situation where you’re having to harvest fruit that really needs to stay on the tree a bit longer.”
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