Florida's citrus groves did not suffer as much damage as some had expected as a result of freezing temperatures from Monday to Tuesday, which pushed down the price of orange juice to its lowest levels since mid December, Bloomberg reports.
Though the October 2010 to July 2011 harvest will produce 143 million boxes of Florida oranges, that figure is lower than the 146 million boxes originally projected by the U.S. Agriculture Department on December 10.
"The panic that gripped the market yesterday has gone as it was not as bad as was expected," Jimmy Tintle, an analyst at Transworld Futures in Tampa, Florida, told Bloomberg. "So it's basically buy on rumors and sell on facts."
Orange juice for March-delivery fell 4.3 cents to $1.644 per pound just before 10 a.m. on ICE Futures in New York. The 2.6 percent reduction was the biggest slip since December 14. Groves in Florida, the second-biggest orange grower in the world, did not endure as much damage from freezing temperatures in Orlando and Tampa, according to a meteorologist.
Florida's October 2009 to July 2010 harvest produced 133.6 million boxes of oranges, which is the second-smallest crop in the past 20 years. Crops damaged by freezing temperatures in January 2010 is the reason for the reduction.
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