Color Us Very Orange

The 1996-97 harvest of oranges in the United States smashed all previous records. And the California navel orange harvest now underway is just short of the state record. It’s all too many oranges for Jonathan Roberts.

Roberts is in charge of selling oranges for Sunkist, the growers’ cooperative that handles almost 60% of the oranges grown in California and Arizona.

When told that some reports had navel oranges being sold only on allocation after January’s rains closed several orchards, Roberts paused and chuckled. “I don’t know where that’s coming from,” he said. “But make no mistake, we have lots and lots of fruit available. We’re into the heaviest part of the season between now and March, and we have so much fruit available.”

This year’s California navel harvest is 3% larger than last year’s and is heavily weighted toward the larger sizes. In other words, although there actually may not be more oranges than last year, there are bigger ones.

Credit the large crop to warm, wet weather through the summer and fall. “We had tremendous growing conditions this year, even into December, when we got some nice warm rains,” Roberts said. “Normally, those rains are cold, and that stops some of the growth, but not this year.”

And although the rain that hit the northern San Joaquin Valley earlier this month may have slowed the harvest, it was just enough to allow frazzled marketers to get back to normal.

“All that did was help us get rid of some of the oranges that had backed up in storage,” Roberts said.

As a result, wholesale orange prices are lower than they have been at this point in the last three years.

When you’re shopping for oranges, look for heavy fruit with smooth, evenly colored skin. Different varieties of navel oranges differ in the depth of the orange color, but there should be no green.

And according to Sunkist’s Andrea Boyle, oranges that will be kept for more than a couple of days should be stored in the refrigerator in a sealed plastic bag or in the vegetable drawer to prevent drying.