Word: citrus
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...sales: $36.4 million), has just closed a $40 million deal to buy its biggest competitor, the Snow Crop division of Clinton Foods Inc. Minute Maid will pay Clinton $22.5 million in cash and $17.3 million in Minute Maid bonds for six processing plants and 7,500 acres of citrus groves, will get a full line of frozen fruits, vegetables, fish and poultry, besides becoming by far the biggest orange juice producer in the field...
...against violent ups and downs in prices. It is the futures market, in which they can buy and sell commodities for delivery months in advance. Last week dealers in two other products subject to roller-coaster price swings were busy setting up futures markets of their own. In Florida citrus men laid plans for a futures market in booming citrus concentrates, whose prices fluctuate as much as 60% in a season. In Chicago a futures market in scrap iron and steel will open late this summer at the huge Mercantile Exchange, where $1.3 billion worth of farm products...
...Bird Dogs. Florida's agriculture has kept pace with its industry. In the center of the state, citrus groves were heavy last week with the biggest crop in history (an estimated 130 million boxes). The "bird dogs," i.e., the middlemen in the industry, sent radio-directed trucks speeding from grove to grove, lining up likely buys. Not long ago, such a huge crop would have meant vast surpluses, and the dumping of millions of bushels of fruit into Florida's lakes and rivers. But "this year, almost every orange and grapefruit will be sold at good prices...
...enormous growth of Florida's citrus industry has been paralleled by big gains in the relatively new pursuit (for Florida) of raising cattle. Until a few years ago, gunfights crackled over the Florida countryside in the best tradition of the West. But now 1,500,000 acres of good cattle land and 1,386.000 head of beef cattle are fenced in under the watchful eyes of Seminole Indian cowhands, and order reigns. Said 77-year-old Agriculture Commissioner Nathan Mayo: "We used to have nothing but scrawny herds of 4-H cattle−hide, hair, hoof and horns...
...Crop. Florida's new kind of boom has cast up a new crop of millionaires. One of the top citrus men is Tom Swann, 52, who runs the groves and concentrate plant for Florence Foods, a big growers' cooperative, and also has 1,600 acres in groves of his own. In the state's growing cattle business, the biggest force is Florida's Lykes family, headed by John Wall Lykes (66) and nephew Charles (37). The Lykeses who also own the Lykes Bros. Steamship Co., Inc., largest shipper under the U.S. flag (54 cargo ships operating...