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From Florida--Origin of Winter's Food
Supply
More than half of the fresh fruits and vegetables eaten by Americans
during winter months are grown in Florida. To produce this bounty, Florida
growers plant more than 850,000 acres of citrus and over 10 million acres
of other crops and pasture.
"With the loss of methyl
bromide, Florida fruit and vegetable growers stand to lose more than $600
million annually for the winter growing season alone," reports John
Van Sickle, an agricultural economist with the University of Florida's Food and
Resource Economics Department at Gainesville. "For fresh citrus,
the loss would be over $13 million."
Including lost sales
from inputs and services that would have been required to grow and market
these crops, the total sales loss in Florida would exceed $1 billion and
cost the economy more than 13,000 jobs. Van Sickle says this estimate is
based on using methyl bromide alternatives that are currently available.
A report by Van Sickle was recently released as "Long Term
Economic Assessment of the Loss of Methyl Bromide on Florida," based
on a study financed by USDA's National Agricultural
Pesticide Impact Assessment Program.
The report covers
methyl bromide as a soil fumigant for tomatoes, strawberries, cucumbers,
watermelon, bell peppers, eggplant, and squash, and as a postharvest
treatment for fresh citrus. It did not consider or place a monetary value
on the loss of methyl bromide as an emergency postharvest treatment to
move commodities from a quarantined area in the event of an invasion of
fruit flies or other serious pests. Currently, methyl bromide is the only
effective treatment for such an invasion.
"We looked at both
chemical and nonchemical alternatives to methyl bromide," said Van
Sickle. "Our focus was primarily on technology and products that
would be a suitable substitute with the least economic impact on
growers."
In conducting the study, Van Sickle worked with
growers, horticulturists, entomologists, and nematologists to determine
the impact that loss of methyl bromide would have on Florida's crop
production.
"Even though we focused on estimating the
impact on Florida, our model does include production and measures of
impact on other national and international growers who sell product in the
U.S. during the winter market," he said.
His report
predicts that tomato production in Florida will decrease more than 60
percent and planted acreage will drop by more than 43 percent if methyl
bromide is banned before more suitable alternatives are found.
It
is not known if methyl bromide will be banned by the Montreal Protocol.
But if it is banned, developing countries may be allowed to use methyl
bromide to produce and market crops for 10 years after the United States'
2001 cutoff date.
Van Sickle estimates that with the loss of
methyl bromide in the United States, Mexican production of tomatoes will
increase 80 percent; bell peppers, 54 percent; cucumbers, 7 percent; and
eggplant, 143 percent.
"We'll lose our competitive edge to
Mexico, a developing country, unless we come up with better substitutes
for methyl bromide," he said.
[October 1995 Table of Contents]
[Newsletter
Issues
Listing]
[Methyl Bromide Home
Page]
[ARS Home Page]
[USDA Home Page]
Last Updated: October 25, 1996
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Last Modified: 01/30/2002
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