A big and unprofitable orange crop
Valor Econômico
A fat and generally profitable crop for orange producers and juice industries. So should be the citrus fruit season starting now in São Paulo, the main center of the segment in the world, as signal estimates disclosed this week. On Thursday, Conab and the State Secretariat of Agriculture announced at the Agrishow of Ribeirão Preto that the harvest of São Paulo should achieve 355 million crates of 40.8 kilograms in this 2011/12 cycle. Of the total, detailed the Institute of Agricultural Economics (IEA), subject to the Secretariat, 303 million should be intended for the juice industries and 52 million will supply the fruit market.
There is no basis for comparison for joint survey, but the estimates of the market sized the last harvest in nearly 300 million cases. Therefore, there will be strong growth, corroborated by the projections of the very industries. On Monday, CitrusBR, which represents the four major exporting industries of juice of the country (Cutrale, Citrosuco, Citrovita and Louis Dreyfus) foresaw the harvest in the citrus fruit belt of São Paulo and Minas Gerais, where is located all the raw material used by the companies, at 387 million crates. There is also no basis for comparison, but the entity acknowledged it will be a "great harvest".
Even though the 2010/11 season has been favorable to the industries - since the offer was lean but the prices of the juice remained high - and, in general, positive for the growers as well, the Minister of Agriculture, Wagner Rossi, declared in Ribeirão Preto, the volatility of the prices paid for the fruit is a reason for concern. The Minister recalled that, in the cycle, the crate sold by the growers ranged from R$ 5 (US$ 3.13) to R$ 15 (US$ 9.38). "We are willing to make an effort to find a way to build a system that can protect the producer from adverse situations and very sharp variations in the prices, but we want to hear the producers to see how we can do that", said Rossi, according to his press office.
According to the IEA, the area planted with orange in São Paulo reaches 601.6 thousand hectares -549.6 thousand of orchards in production, with productivity expected at 671.6 crates per hectare, 8.6% greater than the last crop.