Florida Strawberries

Feb 25

And I'm (finally) back to blogging about Florida agriculture! We're on #2 of 4 with FL strawberries! While all of our tours were interesting, the economics of this row-crop were mind-boggling to these corn & soybean farmers. We think our input costs are high? It costs this particular strawberry grower about $18,000 to put in one acre of berries every. single. year. Check out these photos for more interesting facts & information. An average field is 40 acres. There are 22,500 plants per acre. They replant their strawberry plants every year. Summer heat and humidity puts too much disease pressure on the plants to keep them every year. 80-90% of all Florida berries are grown within a 35-mile radius of Plant City. Any further south, the nights aren't cold enough. Any further north, the growing season isn't long enough. A manager oversees anywhere from 50-75 acres and gets paid about $90,000 to do so. While we were on the tour, we were introduced to this particular farm's manager. He had started out as a picker and worked his way up to manager. Florida is full of stories like this, of people really living out the American Dream. Strawberry growing relies on 100% manual labor, from pulling weeds to picking berries. These fields are picked every 3-4 days from mid-November to April. These hills are rebuilt about every 2 years. For irrigation, they run 2 drip lines in each hill, delivering water and 1/2 lb. of nitrogen every day. Because of new regulations, if there isn't irrigation already in place on the field, there never will be. It wasn't quite harvest time when we were up there, but Michelle did spot these berries. We were told this one wasn't up to standards, but it was probably the best-tasting berry we've ever eaten! This is where the berries, among other fruits and veggies go to be packaged. Michelle told us it's necessary for many berry growers to have ownership in a packaging facility to be profitable. Her farm grows for Driscoll, who has a higher standard for berries. So while full flats of berries may be rejected (meaning a total loss on the flat), her farm gets a premium for all berries that pass inspection.