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Hurricanes and an untreatable tree disease have left a once fruitful citrus industry with little to produce this year
For decades it was the signature taste of Florida: orange juice from the state’s plentiful groves advertised to a thirsty nation as “your daily dose of sunshine”. But now another hyperactive hurricane season, paired with the dogged persistence of an untreatable tree disease known as greening, has left a once thriving citrus industry on life support.
Only 12m boxes of oranges will have been produced in Florida by the end of this year, US Department of Agriculture (USDA) forecasts show, the lowest single-year yield in almost a century. The figure is 33% lower than a year ago, and less than 5% of the 2004 harvest of 242m boxes.
It is also dwarfed by the 378m boxes expected to be produced this year in Brazil, the world’s largest grower and exporter of oranges. Each box weighs 90lbs (41kg) and contains an average 300 pieces of fruit depending on variety.
As a result, Florida-produced juice that used to be a staple of the breakfast table has become an expensive luxury for many families, and some growers who have struggled to keep up with rising production costs and ever-shrinking returns have sold their land for development and left the industry for good.
Despite promising research, scientists still have no solution for citrus greening, the insect-borne disease known as Huanglongbing (HLB), 20 years after it began spreading through Florida’s agricultural heartland, causing blotchy leaves and misshapen and bitter-tasting fruit.
Greening has reduced citrus production in Florida by 75% during that time, the USDA says. And a proportion of groves that did escape have been ripped apart by more frequent and destructive hurricanes.
According to Florida Citrus Mutual, the state’s largest trade group representing 2,000 growers, about 70% of the most productive groves were ravaged by Hurricane Milton in October, just before harvesting.
“It’s been really painful, a real double whammy,” said Wayne Simmons, a fifth-generation Floridian and citrus farmer who owns the LaBelle Fruit Company, and about 250 acres (100 hectares) of groves, 30 miles west of Lake Okeechobee.
Simmons was president of the Gulf Citrus Growers Association, a group of farmers across five counties in the south-west of the state looking out for each others’ interests. But the advocacy group disbanded in May, one year short of its 40th anniversary, after its membership dwindled to fewer than 20. And that was before Milton, and Hurricane Helene only two weeks prior, wreaked further devastation on trees, farms and livelihoods.
“Things down here started going downhill after Hurricane Irma in 2017, and after that, basically, we lost acreage and we lost membership,” Simmons said.
“And certainly you can’t have an association if you don’t have any acreage or members. That was kind of the downfall of it, little by little. Throw in a couple more hurricanes and greening, and it’s been extremely tough.”
Some of the growers, Simmons said, had simply had enough and sold their land for development.
“They’re planting houses and solar panels now,” he said. “I say that off the cuff, and thank goodness they have a source, but that land will never go back to agriculture. Some of it is being fenced and cattle put in, but that’s a poor cash flow situation. You’re not going to make money off of the cattle business.”
Malcolm Manners, professor in citrus science at Florida Southern College, noted that greening had also become an issue in other major citrus producing countries that have been making up the Florida shortfall, especially Brazil, where 38% of trees in its citrus belt showed symptoms of HLB last year, according to the growers’ association Fundecitrus.
He said that added to the urgency for researchers to find a cure or a workaround.
“There’s been some work done with CRISPR technology, where they’re modifying genes that are already there, and that seems to be promising, but those trees are not yet on the market,” he said.
“Once you have a variety on the market, it takes probably two or three years for the nursery industry to multiply it up, then it goes into the groves and takes another three or four years to start harvesting.
“You’re talking a decade from getting such a tree before you really modify the orange juice market worldwide, so there’s hope, but while we’re doing all this waiting, more and more people just keep going out of business.”
Despite what he calls a “frustrating” season for growers, Matt Joyner, the chief executive of Florida Citrus Mutual, said he was confident of better times ahead.
“We have a lot of tools now, just in the last 18-24 months, to deal with citrus greening that we had not had prior, and so tree health, a lot of the metrics that we’ve been looking for as we’ve been looking for solutions, are finally coming around,” he said.
“So there’s some optimism that if we could just have a few good seasons without Mother Nature taking an impact, we’d really have a chance to start to turn the corner and rebuild.”
Joyner said that his members were committed to regrowing their industry “in the perfect environment for what we do”.
“Florida is synonymous with citrus, the orange is on the license plate. Anybody that that has visited, 100 years ago or today, has seen the citrus groves and smelled the orange blossoms, stopped by the roadside stands,” he said.
“To get the gift fruit when you’re up north from a Florida producer is really special, and these growers take great pride… you’ve got fifth, sixth, seventh generation growers that all they want to do is grow oranges.”
Simmons, meanwhile, said he and several others who made up the Gulf coast group plan to stay in the business. “I don’t know if I’m stubborn or hard-headed, but I still have the land and I’m hanging in there. I don’t want to do anything else,” he said.
“We tried peaches and we tried blueberries, we tried olives and a multitude of crops, but nothing grows in Florida like an orange tree. It hurts, it’s disappointing and it will never be like it was in its heyday, but Florida will always have some citrus.”
Florida and oranges have been a pair for decades. Now the industry has sour prospects
