CLEWISTON — Hendry County Extension Director Craig Frey was asked to deliver the 2026 Crop Progress report at the regular meeting of the Hendry County Board of Commissioners on Tuesday, March 10.

“As you have probably started to hear,” Frey began. “It wasn’t really good. Across the board generally, easily 30% losses. Some crops are nearly 60 to 100% losses. Beans was among the crops reported with 100% losses across the area.”

Other crops affected by the freezing temperatures in recent weeks were tomatoes, peppers, watermelon and sugarcane. Frey stated that some of the tomatoes that were younger were able to be saved but the older ones were lost. With watermelon, because it is so adaptive, some of it was able to grow back but there will be reduced yields.

“A lot of the growers tried to pick heavier ahead of time,” he said. He explained that many growers had been out all night trying to elevate water or covering the crops with anything from hay to plates to try and get a couple extra degrees.

A big concern in Florida is citrus. Frey explained, “With citrus, it’s always harder to tell with perennial crops exactly how it’s going to respond. With greening disease trees are stressed already.”

In the past, weather events such as freezing were not as wide-spread as the recent freezes Florida faced. Past freezes may have affected one side of the lake but not the other. The coming weeks will tell exactly how great the losses are.

“The only good news,” Frey said, “Is that the secretary of agriculture declared a disaster emergency for these growers. That will help our growers in the long run.”

Hendry County is among the counties desginated as a primary natural disaster area due to the freezes and frosts that occured Jan. 23 to Feb. 5, 2026.

Board Chair Ramon Iglesias asked Frey if he had heard of any layoffs and job losses of the growers he had spoken with. Frey said that there were a few layoffs with the harvest crews but no drastic losses at this time, because the bigger growers will need their crews later in the season.