All of Florida's Orange Trees Are Disease-Ridden

Once a global symbol of sunshine in a glass, Florida's orange industry is now a fraction of what it was—and it may never come back. At this year's Florida Citrus Show, growers faced a stunning number, per a deep dive in Slate: The state that produced 242 million 90-pound boxes of oranges in 2003 is expected to manage just 12 million this year, the lowest in more than a century and likely an overestimate. Citrus greening disease—also known by its Chinese name, Huanglongbing, or HLB—has infected essentially every tree in Florida, slowly killing each tree's vascular system and leaving behind bitter, misshapen fruit. Pesticides couldn't stop the Asian citrus psyllid that spreads the disease, and the University of Florida now bluntly labels greening "incurable."

The industry has tried stopgaps. Growers are drilling into trunks to inject oxytetracycline, a human antibiotic, which can temporarily improve fruit quality but is costly, short-lived, and hard on older trees. Scientists are working on a genetically modified "tree of the future," but even optimistic timelines put widespread planting a decade or more away—time that many growers say they don't have. Meanwhile, hurricanes supercharged by climate change have battered already weakened groves, and other pests and diseases—canker, black spot, nematodes—keep piling on.

Yet disease and storms are only part of the story. As profits collapsed and regulations loosened in the wake of the Great Recession, developers poured into Central Florida's sandy citrus belt. Former "phenomenal" groves have become Publix supermarkets, sand mines, and "Citrus Place"-labeled housing tracts bearing the names of the families that once grew fruit there. Processing plants and packinghouses that once ran around the clock have mostly closed or shifted to storing imported juice; an estimated three-quarters of the juice packaged in Florida now comes from Mexico or Brazil. When Alico, the state's largest citrus grower, announced last year that it was quitting oranges and converting tens of thousands of acres to housing, row crops, and sites for cattle grazing and oil, it effectively turned Florida's biggest grove into a memorial. More here.