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Cold wipes out Ill. fruit growers' crops
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/farm_scene;_ylt=Ao_YhuwiIA4M6B6BOTU09hZuIfkA

By JIM SUHR, Associated Press Writer Thu Apr 26, 4:50 AM ET

ST. LOUIS - One look at Janet Sager's peach and apple trees would make
anyone understand why her outlook for this year's crop is — in a word —
rotten.


Two weeks after a cold snap savaged tender buds, blooms and early fruit in
the southern Illinois orchard she tends with her husband, the apple trees
"look like they've had a blowtorch to them," she said. The couple found
just one live bloom on a lone peach tree, and their strawberry crop was
obliterated.

"This is the first time I can recall that we've ever had all of them wiped
out at the same time," Sager, 65, said from her home near Kell, in Marion
County, Ill. "Sometimes, you might lose a peach crop, but you still might
have apples or strawberries. Not this year."

Fruit farmers across southern Illinois say they're seeing the worst damage
in a half-century — perhaps ever — after a warm March gave way to a
prolonged April freeze.

"No one remembers the landscape being blighted like this," said Elizabeth
Wahle, a University of Illinois extension service horticulturist who has
viewed the damage and talked to growers. "Hopefully, just like the flood of
1992, this is a once-in-a-lifetime thing."

Early reports from states affected by the Easter weekend freeze show
whopping losses.

U.S. Farm Service Agency offices in North Carolina, for example, said an
estimated $111.7 million in crops was lost across that state, with almost
$27 million of that in vegetables and fruits.

In Texas, grape grower Neal Newsome said he lost 80 percent of his grape
crop from a cold snap he described as "too much, too long." The freeze also
caused serious losses for crops of pecans, peaches, watermelons, cantaloupe
and pumpkins, Texas Cooperative Extension agent Jed Elrod said.

In Arkansas, extension agent Blair Griffin said 300 acres devoted to peach
production in Johnson County are "100 percent lost."

The financial toll in Illinois won't become clear until after May 9, the
cutoff for the state's counties to report damage figures to the U.S. Farm
Service Agency, said Doug Bailey, the agency's chief program specialist in
Springfield, Ill.

The numbers then will be sent to Gov. Rod Blagojevich and perhaps to U.S.
Agriculture Secretary
Mike Johanns, who could make low-interest emergency loans available to
eligible producers.

Illinois' peach orchards were among the hardest hit by the freeze, and
Bailey said it is "pretty much a foregone conclusion in southern Illinois
that the peach crop is gone."

Wahle said it would be "a really rare case" if any southern Illinois peach
growers can salvage any fruit.

Last year, growers in more than 40 states produced 1.3 billion pounds of
peaches, according to the Columbia, S.C.-based National Peach Council.
Illinois ranked ninth last year, accounting for 22.7 million pounds.

___

Associated Press writers Betsy Blaney in Lubbock, Texas, and Margaret
Lillard in Raleigh, N.C., contributed to this report.