Fant Walker, center, tosses a watermelon to Jonathan Manders as Lewis Little, left, watches at the Cordele, Ga., watermelon market Monday, June 22, 1998. Growers are hustling to get the melons out of the fields and into the market before the hot, dry weather can damage them. ASSOCIATED PRESS

Georgia-grown watermelon prices low

Web posted June 29, 1998

By Elliott Minor
Associated Press

CORDELE, Ga. -- Despite three months of drought and sizzling temperatures in south Georgia, watermelons will be a sweet deal for consumers this summer.

The lack of rain can even create a tastier, juicier melon.

``Dry weather produces good quality melons,'' said Darby Granberry, an extension service melon specialist in Tifton. ``We aren't in a crisis situation.''

Like hot dogs, hamburgers and fireworks, watermelons are a staple of most Fourth of July festivities. Sales of the fruit soar like Roman candles as the holiday approaches. Sometimes, so do watermelon prices.

This year, watermelons should be inexpensive and abundant because cool weather in the Northeast has reduced demand and because Georgia and Florida growers have grown more than usual.

``We should see some very attractive prices,'' said Bill Mizelle, an agricultural economist with the University of Georgia Extension Service in Athens.

At 5 to 6 cents per pound -- just barely above the break-even point for farmers -- prices are low for the second-straight year at the state farmers market in Cordele. For consumers, average watermelons are selling for $5 each this week and should go on sale for $2 to $3 next week.

``Watermelons are a sideline,'' said Gennie Huff, a grower from Doles in Worth County. ``This year, if you were just a watermelon grower, you'd probably be going broke.''

Growers have been plagued by nearly three months of extremely hot, dry weather, but most of Georgia's 35,000 to 38,000 acres are irrigated.

Last year, Georgia farmers harvested 31,000 acres, or 651 million pounds of melons for an average price of 5 1/2 cents a pound. Total value of the crop was $35.8 million.

This year, they planted a little more but expect the crop to be a little smaller because the drought will reduce yield.

As a major melon supplier, the farmers market is abuzz these days with farmers who grow them, buyers who peddle them and truckers who haul them on beds of hay to distant markets.

Lovel Grant sweated in the 100-degree heat as he heaved 26-pound watermelons into a tractor-trailer about to depart for North Carolina.

``I drink beer all day,'' he said. ``As long as I have beer, I can load watermelons.''

Grant, 51, follows the watermelon crop from Florida to Delaware, loading the trucks that haul the melons to fruit stands and supermarkets.

``It keeps me in shape,'' he said.

David Hobbs, a grower, a buyer and a shipper, sat in his temporary office recently with his ear glued to the telephone, arranging shipments and making deals with supermarkets and produce dealers.

Hobbs, a director of the National Watermelon Promotion Board in Orlando, Fla., and chairman of the Georgia Watermelon Association, described watermelons as the American dream crop.

``You're always hoping,'' he said. ``You never know what the price will be. You make money some years. You lose some years.''