Will Florida Oranges Survive Another Hurricane Season?

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Oranges are synonymous with Florida. The zesty fruit can be seen adorning everything from license plates to kitschy memorabilia. Ask any Floridian and they'll tell you the plant is a symbol of the Sunshine State.

Jay Clark would be quick to agree. He is 80 years old and a third-generation farmer who has worked the land his family has owned in Wauchla since the 1950s. But he's not sure how long he can go on. Two years ago, Hurricane Ian decimated the trees, which were already weakened by a deadly and incurable disease called orange blossom. It took more than a year to recover after “the entire crop was blown away” by 150 mph winds. “It's a struggle,” Clark said. “I think we're too stubborn to stop completely, but it's not a profitable business at the moment.”

His family once owned nearly 500 acres in west central Florida, where they grew oranges and raised beef. They have sold much of that land in recent years, and have reduced their orange groves. “We are very focused on cows,” he said. “Everybody is looking for another plant or solution.”

The state, which grows about 17 percent of the nation's oranges, grapefruit, and other tangy fruits, produced 18.1 million boxes in the 2022 to 2023 growing season, the smallest harvest in nearly a century. That's a 60 percent drop from last season, a drop largely driven by the combined effects of mysterious viruses and hurricanes. This year, the USDA's recently released final forecasts for the season reveal an 11.4 percent increase in production over last year, but that's not even a fraction of what was produced in the 2021 to 2022 season.

Consumers across the country have felt the pressure from the decline, which has been compounded by floods that have disrupted crops in Brazil, the world's largest exporter of orange juice. All this has driven the cost of the drink to record highs.

As climate change makes hurricanes more likely, disease kills more trees, and water grows harder to find, Florida's nearly $7 billion orange industry faces an existential threat. The Sunshine State, once among the world's leading citrus producers and as of 2014 producing nearly three-quarters of the nation's oranges, has faced such challenges before. Its citrus growers are nothing if not tough. Some have faith that ongoing research will find a cure for orange planting, which can go a long way toward recovery. But others are less optimistic about the road ahead, as the dangers they face now are signs of the future.

“We are still there but it is not a good situation. We are there, but that's about it,” Clark said. “He is bigger than our family as orange growers. If a solution is not found, there will be no citrus industry.”

Citrus canker, a chronic disease spread by insects that damage plants before eventually killing the trees, has threatened Florida's citrus industry since the disease first struck Miami nearly two decades ago. It appeared a few years after an outbreak of orange canker, which made the plants unmarketable, and led to the loss of millions of trees across the country. Although plantings have been seen in other citrus powerhouses such as California and Texas, it has not significantly affected commercial groves in either state. The extent of damage in Florida is very large, and very expensive – since 2005, it has reduced production by 75 percent. The Sunshine State's mild year-round climate allows infestations to spread at high altitudes. But as warming continues to increase global temperatures, the disease is expected to move further north.

“You see a lot of abandoned orange trees on highways, all roads,” said Amir Rezazadeh, of the University of Florida's Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences. “Most of those trees are just dead now.”

Rezazadeh works as a liaison between university scientists trying to solve the problem and orange growers in St. Lucie County, one of the most productive areas in the state. “We have many meetings, we visit farmers every month, and there are many researchers working to develop disease-resistant varieties,” he said. “And it makes these orange farmers nervous. [Everyone] awaiting new research results.”

The greatest promise is found in antibiotics designed to reduce the effects of infection. Despite initial encouraging results in reducing symptoms, treatments such as oxytetracycline are still in the early stages and require growers to inject the drug into all infected trees. More importantly, it's not a cure, just a stopgap – a way to keep affected trees alive while researchers race to figure out how to defeat this mysterious disease.

“We need more time,” said Rezazadeh. Farmers in St. Lucie County started using the disinfectant last year. “There are hopes that we will keep them alive until we find a cure.”

The state's total citrus acreage suffered a major disaster in the 1990s when a canker eradication program, then a major enemy of the industry, resulted in the cutting down of hundreds of thousands of trees on private lands. In the years since citrus planting began, the negative effects of this damage have included a constant stream of hurricanes, floods, and drought threatening farmers.

Hurricanes do more than uproot trees, scatter fruit, and shake trees so violently that it can take years to recover. Floods and floods can wash away trees and deplete oxygen from the soil. Diseased trees are at particular risk because the disease often affects their roots, weakening them. Ray Royce, executive director of the Highlands County Citrus Growers Association, likens it to an existing disease.

“I am an old man. If I catch a cold, or get sick, it's harder for me to recover at 66 than at 33. “When I have a health problem, it becomes even more difficult,” he said. “Planting is kind of this negative life cycle that makes whatever else is happening to the tree, stressing that tree, it's going to be enhanced.”

It doesn't help that climate change has brought insufficient rainfall, higher temperatures, and record dry periods, leaving soils with less water. The lack of rain has also dried up wells and canals in some of the most productive districts in the state. All this can reduce the yield and cause the fruits to drop prematurely.

Of course, healthy trees have a higher chance of resisting such threats. But the resilience of hardy trees is being tested, and events as small as a short freeze can be enough to wipe out any that are close to death.

“Suddenly we had a bit of bad luck. We had a storm. “After the storm we had snow,” said Royce. “We have now gone through a drought that will undoubtedly affect next year's crop. And so, somehow, we need to catch a few breaks and have a few good years where we get the right amount of moisture, where we don't have storms, or snow, that have a negative impact on the trees. “

Human-caused climate change means that the rest Royce hopes for is impossible. In fact, forecasters expect this to be the most active hurricane season in recorded history. The researchers also found that warming will increase plant disease pressures, such as wilt, in crops around the world.

Although “almost every tree in Florida” has the disease, and the fact that warmer temperatures spread the virus is a growing concern, the days of orange production are far from over, said Tim Widmer, a plant pathologist who specializes in plant and crop diseases. plant health. “We still don't have a solution,” he said. “But there are things that look very promising.” Funding is dedicated to the hunt for answers to a perplexing problem. The Florida legislature has set aside $65 million in the 2023-2024 budget to support the industry, and the 2018 state farm bill includes $25 million a year, the length of the bill, to fight the disease.

Widmer is a contractor at the US Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Research Service, who is designing an automated system (known as “symbiont technology”) that will “pump” therapeutic drugs such as antimicrobial peptides that destroy pathogens into a host plant, allowing farmers to inject for longer periods of time. personally. Think of it as “a kind of biofactory that produces compounds of interest and delivers them directly to the tree,” says Widmer. But they just started testing it on a 40-acre site this spring. Other solutions that scientists are pursuing include breeding new varieties of oranges that may be able to tolerate the rot. “It takes 8 to 10 to 12 years to develop a long-term solution [greening]and some of the climate change factors that will affect orange production,” said Widmer.

Time is something many family businesses cannot afford. In the past few years, an increasing number of Florida citrus groves, growers' associations, and related businesses have closed permanently. Ian was the founder of Sun Groves, a family business in Oldsmar that opened in 1933.

“We've definitely been hit by snow, hurricanes … and we've tried as long as possible to stay in business despite all the challenges,” said Michelle Urbanski, former general manager. “When Hurricane Ian hit, that was the final blow when we knew we had to close the business.”

The financial losses were enormous, ending the family's nearly century-long contribution to the advancement of Florida's now-troubled orange heritage. “It was sad for my family to close Sun Groves,” she said. Between crippling floods and catastrophic storms, it's a feeling many others may soon know.

This article first appeared on Grist at Grist is a non-profit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories about climate solutions and a just future. Learn more at Grist.org