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.