Be prepared to fork out more money for your favorite produce this year. As if hurricanes weren’t bad enough — consider this week national freezer burn week. From coast to coast record low temperatures have swept through communities leaving power outages and icycles in its wake.
The spotlight is however on California’s agricultural economy which provides roughly 85% of the nations produce to your local supermarket. Everything from flowers to oranges have largely been lost due to frost bite:
More than 70 percent of this season’s oranges, lemons and tangerines – nearly $1 billion worth of fruit – were still on the trees as nighttime temperatures in California’s Central Valley dipped into the low 20s and teens on four straight nights beginning Friday. The freeze ruined as much as three-quarters of the California citrus crop, growers say; the fruit is threatened whenever the mercury falls below 28 degree
And for those of you planning your annual Super Browl Guacomole surprise, you can expect less bang for your avocado buck:
‘We may adjust the prices as we discover the full extent of the damage next week, but for now, if you bought an avocado at the supermarket for 99 cents, expect to pay 2 dollars to 2.49 for it,’
Most of the markets’ losses however will be from using large area heating and fans to keep warm air circulating through fields, a process which was largely unsuccessful. This isn’t the first time in recent years however that California has had large losses due to subaverage weather:
In 1998, the California citrus industry suffered a $700 million loss after a three-day freeze in which 85 percent of the crop was lost…
As many as 12,000 farming jobs may be lost, impacting the valley communities that largely support most of the central agricultural regions of California. The full extent of the losses from this poor weather will not be known until winter crops cycle for harvest. 