Citrus growers seek bailout

Christopher Serju, Gleaner Writer

THE ONCE-viable Citrus Growers Association now finds itself in serious financial trouble, to the extent that it has sought a bailout from the Government.

"I think the Government is going to be obliged to help us to get out of the position we are in, because we certainly cannot dig ourselves out of this hole that we've got ourselves into.

"Some of it, the minister will tell us, is our own fault, and I am sure we have contributed to it in some way," director Ken Newman told an Editors' Forum hosted jointly by The Gleaner and the Jamaica Agricultural Society (JAS) at its Church Street headquarters yesterday.

Capital needed

Dogged by two successive years of very low prices that have limited the Citrus Growers Association's ability to buy oranges to supply its processing plant in Bog Walk, St Catherine, it is in serious need of a massive capital injection to stay alive.

Established in the 1940s, the Citrus Growers Association, which markets orange juice under the Juciful brand, up until the 1980s was a shining example of how a farmers group should operate. However, following deregulation that saw it losing its major income source - the cess on exported concentrate and processed fruit - the association fell into decline with a serious falloff in citrus production, especially over the past 10 years.

After coping with the tristeza virus that threatened to destroy the local industry in the 1990s, Citrus Growers Association is now having to deal with a bacterial infection commonly called 'greening'.

That aside, the marketing challenges have been many, with Newman declaring, ironically, that the opportunities for citrus are great now, given the lucrative local market for fresh fruit.

"Right now, a 90-pound box of orange is selling in the range of $1,200. At the height of the season, it was selling for half of that, but when we sold it to the factories this year, all we got was $300 a box. The break-even point is about $400-$450, you can survive at that," he disclosed.

Among the grouses is the lack of protection for the industry, as a result of which it is sometimes saddled with inventories of citrus concentrate it is unable to sell, Newman charged.

He said in 2009, citrus concentrate was imported from Vietnam in what was an attempt at dumping.

"Right now we are in a bit of the doldrums," Newman said, in summing up the situation facing the citrus industry.