The last imports of South African citrus coming into the United States should be arriving this week. Meanwhile, here is an update on Louisiana sweet potato shipments where product still not harvested got pounded by rains last month.
South Africa Citrus
The last boat of the season from South Africa with citrus is scheduled to arrive in Philadelphia the week of Sept. 26th. Steady volumes of navel and midknight oranges from South Africa have been arriving in the U.S.
South Africa ships navels, midknights, mandarins, star ruby grapefruit and cara cara oranges.
Louisiana Sweet Potato Shipments
The nation’s fourth leading sweet potato shipper – Louisiana – was hit hard by heavy rains several weeks ago and we’re now starting to get a clearer picture of how much damage was done.
Torrential rains in southern Louisiana in mid-August caused major damage to the state’s agricultural producers, but the full extent of sweet potato losses remains to be seen. More than 30 inches of rain fell in a 48-hour period in many parts of southern Louisiana in mid-August, and more rain followed.
There’s no question the deluge will reduce the number of sweet potatoes shipped from Louisiana this year, but it is still too early to put a number on it. Sweet potato shipments undoubtedly will be be less because the fields were saturated for days. By mid-September growers had either just started to dig or hadn’t started at all, making it difficult to come up with a good damage estimate.
Louisiana sweet potato growers south of Alexandria appeared to suffer the heaviest losses, but none of the state’s growers totally escaped the storm’s wrath. Luckily, the majority of sweet potato production in the state is found north of Alexandria.
Louisiana shipped about 1.7 million boxes of sweet potatoes last season, fourth behind North Carolina, California and Mississippi. Overall, sweet potato shipments on a national basis probably won’t be down, because North Carolina ships the majority of sweet potatoes, with California a distance second.