US: Citrus ills pose new challenges to industry

The mechanical clipper rumbles close, lowers its steel pincers, takes aim. A slight squeak. A sharp crack. Another orange tree, infected by the spit of a gnatsize insect and condemned by a scarlet letter X, is "pushed." Death came in six seconds.

On this day alone, in this single grove, 300 trees will be clipped and burned. It’s like this every day now for the citrus industry, under attack by a new threat called greening. "A sad deal", said Jim Snively, a fourth-generation grower. One of Florida’s original industries, "Come to the Florida Sunshine Tree", as Anita Bryant sang in commercials in the 1970 s, is shrinking, battling and evolving as it confronts disease and development, globalization and dehydration, periodic freezes and hurricanes.

What citrus is not doing is dying. It remains a $ 9 billion industry, still one of the most lucrative crops grown in a state largely propelled into existence by oranges and grapefruit. Yet as another harvest begins, it also can’t be said to be carefree and thriving. The story of citrus is complex and nuanced — and it is not over, growers say. "It is a huge struggle, but this is something that citrus growers over the generations have wrestled with, and they’ve always come out on top", said Mike Sparks, chief executive of the Florida Citrus Mutual, an industry group that represents 8, 000 growers.

Only vegetables and melons, considered a single entity by state statisticians, account for more agricultural sales in Florida, and the state remains the world’s third-leading producer of citrus, behind only Brazil and China. But survival requires persistence, creativity, cooperation, and pure luck. "I am not sure which is the worse gambling problem, citrus or going to Vegas", said Steve Rogers, whose family has been growing citrus in the Lakeland area for generations.

The industry has shriveled and is producing less fruit, but the hardiest growers are making more money as the law of supply and demand kicks in. At the same time, fewer oranges also means higher prices for consumers: a gallon of juice cost about $ 3. 80 in 1997 but is about $ 5. 70 now.

The state’s ultimately futile eradication program against the canker bacteria, widely criticized as arbitrary and heavyhanded, claimed 865, 000 residential trees in South Florida and elsewhere, but the campaign also destroyed 15. 6 million commercial and nursery trees. The industry has learned to live with the canker, but now, largely unnoticed by the public, it’s more imperiled by greening, a disease caused by a different bacterium that is injected into the plant through the bite of the tiny psyllid.

Unlike canker, greening actually kills citrus trees. Southern Gardens Citrus, a subsidiary of U. S. Sugar and one of the state’s largest growers, has lost 100, 000 of its 2. 3 million trees — more than 4 percent — to greening in the past two years.
That magnitude of loss requires growers to adopt drastic steps. How drastic ?

Ten years ago, Southern Gardens had five disease "scouts" on the payroll. Now, it has 40 who walk through the remote, sandy groves of Hendry County in south central Florida, methodically searching for signs of greening. They also have eight frontloaders that clip and stack sick trees. "Greening has been a scourge every place that it’s been", said Tom Spreen, professor and chairman of the University of Florida’s Food and Resource Economics Department. "It literally is the black plague of citrus.” And it is just one of many stubborn challenges for an industry that remains of crucial importance to Florida, even after all these years.

"Florida orange juice isn’t going away, and neither are we", said Ricke Kress, Southern Gardens’ president. In the world of commodities, less supply nearly always means higher prices, so although acreage plummeted 22 percent between 2004 and 2005, the value of Florida’s scarcer citrus crop increased 14 percent to $ 1. 02 billion. Last year, sales rose to $ 1. 36 billion.

As those cash receipts rebound around Florida’s farmsupply stores, trucking companies, processing plants, supermarkets, shopping malls and other businesses, they end up contributing about $ 9 billion in indirect annual economic impact, according to the University of Florida, state officials and the Citrus Mutual.

The state’s battle against canker can’t be called a victory, but it didn’t lead to defeat, either. Harmless to humans, the disease mars fruit and undermines the health of trees. The industry had said canker had to be eradicated, no holds barred, igniting the $ 1 billion state and federal program that infuriated backyard growers in South Florida and around the state.

But the campaign crumbled, a victim of its own lawsuit-generating aggression and the barrage of hurricanes that struck the state in 2004 and 2005, blowing the disease hither and yon. Now, although canker is more widespread, the industry is moderating its assessment of the threat.

"We can live with canker", Sparks said. "There are protocols set up. We are in a cankersuppression program, not a canker-eradication program." At the same time, citrus growers are concentrating on greening and the tristeza virus. Greening, described by many experts as the world’s worst citrus disease, attacks a tree’s vascular system, eating away at the tree from the inside. It discolors and curls leaves, sours fruit and eventually kills the tree.

"Greening is our top problem right now", Sparks said. "No question about it." The challenge is compounded when growers abandon a grove or a homeowner ignores early evidence of tree sickness. In both cases, disease can spread swiftly to productive groves that had been given the best of care.

Growers say they can barely find enough workers to harvest the crop, and they want relief, lest more of the business moves to Brazil or elsewhere overseas. Industry engineers and scientists are working on new fruit-picking machines and experimental chemical substances that might allow oranges to be pulled from trees more efficiently. "We have been harvesting citrus the same way for 100 years, a laborer, a bag and a ladder", Sparks said. "I think you will see some changes in that in the immediate future."


Source: nwanews.com

Publication date: 12/12/2007

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