Oranges are synonymous with Florida. The refreshing fruit adorns everything from license plates to kitschy memorabilia. Ask any Floridian and they’ll tell you that oranges are an icon of the Sunshine State.
Jay Clark would be quick to agree. He’s 80 years old and a third-generation grower on land that’s been in his family’s Wauchula estate since the 1950s. But he’s not sure how much longer he can keep going. Two years ago, Hurricane Ian pummeled trees that were already weakened by a highly toxic and incurable disease called citrus greening. It took him more than a year to recover after 150-mile-per-hour winds “pretty much blew the whole crop away.” “It’s a struggle,” Clark says. “I think I’d be too stubborn to quit completely, but it’s not a profitable business right now.”
His family once owned about 500 acres in west-central Florida, where they grew oranges and raised cattle. In recent years they sold much of the land and scaled back their citrus groves. “We’re focusing more on cattle,” he says. “Everybody’s looking for alternative crops and solutions.”
The state is approximately 17 percent Domestic oranges, grapefruits, and other sour fruits are 18.1 million boxes During the 2022-2023 growing season, Smallest harvest in nearly a centuryit is 60 percent decrease The decline compared to last season was mainly due to the combined effects of a mysterious pathogen and hurricanes. Final predictions for this season reveal 11.4 percent Although production has increased sharply since last year, Half Produced during the 2021-2022 season.
Consumers across the country are feeling the squeeze from these declines, which have been exacerbated by the floods. Brazilian harvest suppressionthe world’s largest exporter of orange juice. All this drives up the price of the beverage, Record highs.
As climate change makes storms more likely, trees die from disease, and water becomes less available, Florida is nearing the end of its 2018 season. $7 Billion Citrus Industry It is facing an existential crisis. One of the world’s leading citrus producing countries Produced until 2014 Nearly three-quarters of the country’s orangesCitrus growers in the country have weathered similar challenges before, and they are truly resilient. Some believe that ongoing research will find a cure for citrus greening that will go a long way towards recovery. However, others are less optimistic about the outlook, as the dangers they face today are a harbinger of things to come.
“We’re still here, but things aren’t good. We’re the only ones here,” Clark said. “This isn’t just about our family, the citrus growers. If we don’t find a solution, there will be no citrus industry.”
Citrus greening disease, An incurable disease spread by insects that Destroys crops and eventually kills treesSince the disease spread, Florida’s citrus industry has been in crisis. In the Miami Woods About 20 years ago. Citrus canker diseasecrops became unsellable, Millions of trees Statewide, greening has also been seen in other citrus-growing regions such as California and Texas. Extensive damage to commercial orchards in In either stateThe Florida epidemic is the largest and most destructive to date, with production dropping 1.2% since 2005. 75 percentFlorida has a subtropical climate all year round, which allows the pests to spread at a faster pace. However, as global temperatures continue to rise, the spread of the pests will continue to accelerate. The disease is expected to move northward.
“You see a lot of abandoned citrus groves along highways and roads,” says Amir Rezazadeh of the University of Florida’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences, “and most of those trees are dead now.”
Rezazadeh serves as a liaison between university scientists trying to solve the problem and St. Lucie County citrus growers. One of the state’s leading producers“We have a lot of meetings and visits with growers every month, and we have a lot of researchers working on developing resistant varieties,” he says, “and that’s really making citrus growers nervous. [Everyone] We await the results of further research.”
The most promising are antibiotics developed to reduce the effects of greening. Early relief of symptomsthe following treatments: Oxytetracycline It’s still in the early stages, and growers will need to inject the treatment into all infected trees. More importantly, this is not a cure, just a stopgap measure — a way to keep infected trees alive while researchers race to find a way to defeat the mysterious disease.
“We need more time,” Rezazadeh said, noting that farmers in St. Lucie County began using antibiotics last year. “There’s hope that we can keep them alive until we find a cure.”
In the 1990s, citrus acreage across the state was hit hard by a program to eradicate canker disease, then the industry’s biggest enemy. Hundreds of thousands of trees planted on private landIn the years since the citrus greening epidemic began, a series of hurricanes, floods and droughts have threatened citrus growers, further exacerbating the disease’s ripple effects.
Hurricanes don’t just uproot trees, scatter fruit and shake them violently; they can take years for trees to recover. Heavy rains and flooding drown orchards and deplete the oxygen in the soil. Diseased trees are especially at risk because the disease often affects and weakens the roots. Ray Royce, executive director of the Highlands County Citrus Growers Association, likens it to a pre-existing condition.
“I’m an older person. If I catch a cold or get sick, it’s harder for me to recover at 66 than it was at 33. If you have underlying conditions, it’s even harder to recover,” he says. “Greening is like a negative underlying condition that magnifies everything else that’s happening to the tree, everything that’s stressing the tree.”
Climate change also has an impact Lack of rainfall, rising temperatures and record driest seasonThe moisture content of the soil decreases. Lack of precipitation It has dried up Wells and canals Several The state’s most productive regionAll of this can result in reduced yields and early fruit drop.
Of course, healthy trees are more likely to survive such threats. But the tenacity of the stronger trees is being tested, and what were once minor events are now being put to the test. Short freeze It will be enough to put an end to what is already on the brink of extinction.
“All of a sudden we’ve had a string of bad luck. We had a hurricane, and then a freeze after the hurricane,” Reuss said. “Now we have a drought that’s definitely going to hurt next year’s crop. So in some ways we’ve got to get lucky a few times and have a couple of good years where we get the right amount of moisture and we don’t have the hurricanes or freezes that are going to hurt the trees.”
Florida is trying to remove climate change provisions from most of its laws
Human-caused climate change means the respite Lois craves is unlikely to come to fruition. In fact, forecasters expect This year will be the most active hurricane season on record. The researchers also Global warming increases pressure from plant diseaseslike Greeningin Crops from around the world.
With “almost every tree in Florida” sick and concerns that rising temperatures will spread the pathogen, the state’s days of citrus production are far from over, says Tim Widmer, a plant pathologist who specializes in crop diseases and plant health. “We don’t have the solution yet,” he says, “but we have some very promising ideas.” A lot of money is being poured into the search for answers to this perplexing problem. The Florida Legislature has $65 million in the 2023-2024 budget To support the industry, 2018 Federal Farm Bill included $25 million per yeardepending on the length of the bill, Fighting disease.
Widmer is a contractor for the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service, which develops automated systems (“Symbiotic Technology) to “promote” treatments such as Antimicrobial peptides that destroy pathogens Injecting into the host tree would save growers the trouble of having to do it manually. Widmer says to think of it as “kind of a biofactory where you’re producing the compound of interest and then injecting it directly into the tree.” But they’re only just starting to test it this spring in a 40-acre orchard. Other solutions scientists are pursuing include: Cultivation of new citrus varieties Developing more disease-resistant plants. “It will take eight to 10 to 12 years to develop a long-term solution. [greening]We will also address some of the climate change factors that will impact citrus production,” Widmer said.
For many family-run businesses, time is a luxury. Citrus Orchard, Producers Associationand Related Business It has closed for good. Ian was a turning point for the family-run Sun Groves, which first opened in 1933 in Oldsmar.
“We had freezes and hurricanes, but we tried to stay open as long as we could despite all the challenges,” General Manager Michelle Urbanski said. “When Hurricane Ian hit, that was really the final straw and we knew we had to close.”
The economic loss was so great that it put an end to her family’s nearly century-long contributions to Florida’s enduring but now struggling citrus tradition. “Closing Sun Groves was heartbreaking for our family,” she said, amid a devastating pest infestation and disastrous storms, a feeling that would soon be experienced by many others.
