Some citrus growers want market controls ended.

A newly formed bloc of mostly large California growers, Agriculture for Market-Oriented Policies, said it will launch “a mass communications program” seeking to end a federal order controlling the supply of Valencia oranges and lemons. However, the industry-based Valencia Orange Administrative Committee, meeting in Lindsay, voted to recommend that Agriculture Secretary John R. Block continue the 50-year-old order. Block in January lifted the regulation controlling navel oranges after prices remained unseasonably high. A spokesman for Sunkist Growers said “the vast majority” of growers support the order. In the last referendum conducted among the state’s navel orange growers, for example, 91% voted for the order, he said.