In peach country, the old-timers say a bad crop only gets
worse.
This year has proven that adage true.
As the peach crop has matured, growers have found that less
of their crop survived than
experts first thought after a mid-February freeze.
But in two of the top peach-producing counties, University of
Georgia Extension Service
agents say there will be enough for Georgia peach fans.
“We’ll have enough for sale in the area packing houses and at
roadside
stands,” said
Peach County Extension Director Mark Collier. “But we won’t be
shipping many out of the state.”
Farther south, Brooks County Extension Director Johnny
Whiddon said peach growers in
his county expect to ship some peaches, but not many, compared
to the usual.
Surprisingly, Collier doesn’t expect prices to rise much. “I
don’t expect the average person
buying peaches in Georgia will notice a lot of difference,” he
said
Peach lovers in other states will have a shorter supply. But
California growers will
try to take up the slack.
Collier said right after the freeze, he helped farmers
estimate the damage to their
peaches.
“The fruit was so immature it was hard to tell if it
survived the freeze," he said. "But we estimated a 75
percent loss. As we kept
looking every week or two, we found we had more freeze damage
than we thought.”
He estimates the Peach County crop now at 5 percent of
normal — about 4 million
pounds, compared to more than 80 million normally.
Brooks County peaches fared only a little better, Whiddon
said about 10 percent
survived. “We
expected about 20 percent to be OK," he said. "But
we’re the same as other peach
growing areas. The more they matured, the more we found
damaged.”
Another problem peach farmers face is getting the fruit that
did survive picked.
“We can sometimes get as much as four bushels of fruit
from one tree,”
Collier said. Some trees this year may have eight or 10 peaches
on them. Some have none.
Whiddon and Collier said growers rely on migrant workers to
harvest the crop. But with
so few peaches on the trees, the workers, who are paid based on
the amount they pick, can’t afford to spend time
searching for fruit.
Some small, protected areas weren’t frozen and have close to
a full amount of fruit on them still,
Collier said. “But
those areas are few and far between.”
Fortunately, this short crop shouldn’t affect the crop next
year. Many farmers have stopped applying
pesticides to protect fruit from insects. It doesn’t make
financial sense to
put money into an orchard when so little money is coming out.
But they’>re
still protecting the trees. “The trees weren’t damaged and
should recover to produce fruit again,” said Collier. “Only the
fruit was frozen.”
The fruit that remains will have to satisfy Georgia peach
lovers and travelers coming
through or into the state. Unfortunately for Georgia peach
farmers, out-of-state peach
lovers will mostly be doing without.
