82 



Please find below several examples of why the tropical fruit 

 crops grown in South Florida that do not fit into the 

 current ASCS Crop Disaster requirements. 



1. Tropical fruit crops like papaya and banana are planted 

 and harvested over a twelve month period or more. Thus it 

 may be impossible to incur the required 40% crop loss in the 

 remaining 4.5 months of 1992. 



2. Tropical fruit crops like avocado, carambola, guava, 

 and passionfruit have cropping seasons that straddle two 

 years. For example, some carambolas (5% of the crop) and 

 avocados (12% of the crop) were harvested before the storm. 

 However, carambola and avocado season would have been from 

 about June through December of 1992 and January to March of 

 1993. In most cases, they lost much more than 40% of their- 

 crop for the 1992-93 season. 



3. The flowering to harvest period for mamey sapote is 15 

 to 24 months. Their current crop was destroyed (May to 

 October and December to February) and trees will not produce 

 another crop for the next two or more years. 



4. For some fruit crops such as limes, mangos, lychees, 

 and longans entire groves were destroyed. This means their 

 total loss will last from 3 to 6 years from replanting. 



5. California citrus growers recently lost most of their 

 Navel orange crop due to a freeze. Unfortunately, the 

 freeze also damaged the Valencia orange trees to the point 

 that their crop for the next year was also lost. As a 

 result, the Valencia crop was covered by the ASCS Crop 

 Assistance Program. 



6. Analalogous to the Valencia crop loss in California, 

 are the 'Tahiti' limes tree in South Florida in bud at the 

 time of the hurricane which have lost their crop for the 

 early 1993. 



