Smaller Northern Hemisphere citrus crop forecast

The World Citrus Organisation (WCO) has released its annual Northern Hemisphere citrus forecast for the 2021/22 season, with volumes expected to fall slightly year-on-year. The crop is projected to reach 29.3m tons (-1.3% compared with 2020/21).

The orange crop is projected to fall by 3.5% to 15.5m tons, while a slight drop is also expected for grapefruit (-0.3% to 950,000 tons) and soft citrus (-0.7% to 8.5m tons). Bucking the downward trend, lemon production is projected to increase by 5.6% to 4.5m tons.

In the EU, citrus production is set to fall by 9.4% in Greece, 7.7% in Spain and 2.6% in Italy. In the southern rim of the Mediterranean, production is forecast to decrease in Tunisia (-22%), remain stable in Egypt (-0.1%), and increase in Israel (+26.6%), Turkey (+21.9%), and Morocco (+5.5%). The US citrus crop is expected to decrease by 11.8%.