Australian citrus growers have welcomed the recent slide of the Australian dollar against the greenback, meaning greater returns for them this export season.
Frank Battistel, a citrus farmer in the New South Wales town of Griffith, told the Sydney Morning Herald he was delighted that his distributor had secured sales of his produce at A$0.82 to US$1.
"It's been a struggle," Mr Battistel said. "The Australian dollar is too high to the US dollar. When it was at A$0.93 we weren't making any money. At A$0.80 you can survive. At A$0.70 you make a profit."
Griffith is located in the Riverina region of New South Wales, Australia's largest citrus growing area, and farmers like Mr Battistel will sell 40 per cent of their fruit overseas, 40 per cent domestically and the remainder to fruit juice companies.
A spring heatwave in the region caused a lot of fruit drop from trees, and has left growers with a smaller navel orange crop overall, but much larger-sized fruit, and Mr Battistel believes this could help sales in the US.
"Americans like everything big, so they like big fruit," he said.
Workers at Mr Battistel's property were busy picking Navelinas yesterday, the earliest of all navel varieties, ahead of rain forecast for today.
