Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
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best pack in the state. When we sell a box of #1 quality fruit, I guarantee, it
not only eats good, but it looks like a million bucks.” A tour substantiates
this claim.
Rob drives around the grove on his ancient tractor that starts most of
the time, pulling a trailer that is loaded with wooden crates of oranges. He
stops, picks a few oranges, and slices them with a huge knife. He gobbles
half in one bite, neatly spitting out the seeds. He has clearly had plenty of
practice at eating citrus. He says, “Damn, these things are good, and the
trees are only two years old, and to put quality out like that. I wish I had
ten more acres of them. Look how nice they are. They are basically pretty.
Pretty. All right, we have one more stop.”We continue to the other edge of
the grove and then back to the packinghouse. Rob asks, “Do you want to
see big? Look at these grapefruit. And good. A seven- and a nine-year-old
kid was here yesterday with their granddad. I always give the guy a lot of
fruit for his cows when we can't get rid of it. You should have seen those
kids wiping out that grapefruit! And kids don't usually eat grapefruit. They
were like, 'Wow, these are good!' ”
Rob describes their concern for quality and their motivation for a high
“pack out.” That is of all the citrus that is picked, how much of it is fit for
boxing and selling, versus how much is wasted (or donated, as Rob says).
“To find anybody that is really truly committed growers, like us, they are far
and few between. People that take care of the trees. We are in the fresh fruit
market. Packout is the bottom line. The better you pack out, the more you
are making, because basically everything you don't pack gets thrown away.
Or donated.” Mary says, “I'm the eliminator. I'm often the one doing the
eliminations on the line. So our pack out would run 60-75 percent on most
things, 90 percent on my tangelos. They are just a clean piece of fruit.” Rob
agrees. “Well, every variety is different. My Orlando tangelos, I run about
95 percent, which is super. My friend's grapefruit we are packing right now,
he is probably packing 65-70 percent, which is super on grapefruits.” Rob
says that he was amazed at the poor quality of some of the organic citrus
in the region. “There is a ten-acre certified block of organic grapefruits that
belongs to a family that is inside of their 25,000-acre grove. The rest is juice
fruit. This guy got in a pinch a couple of weeks ago, and we packed some of
them for him against my better judgment. The grapefruit itself was not bad
eating, but it was some ugly shit. He brought five hundred boxes up here
on a flat bed trailer. That is fifty of those bins like that. I sent him back with
about twenty. Terrible pack out. More than half. I figured we had about 37
percent pack out on that.”
Mary says, “Florida has a bad reputation as far as citrus for not having
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