When we moved to Florida more than 40 years ago, the heavenly smell from an orange juice factory frequenly wafted over our new house. As we drove around we frequently encountered citrus groves, and just outside of our neighborhood a farm stand sold Page oranges. Technically a Page orange is not an orange, but a cross between a clementine and a tangelo, thus 3/4 tangerine and 1/4 grapefruit. But these small, round orange-colored glories are by far my favorite citrus fruit, now nearly impossible to obtain. In the image below, the juice on the right is the best unpasteurized, non-adulterated, not-from-concentrate orange juice I could buy from the grocery store, and the juice on the left was squeezed from Page oranges.
Sadly, a series of devastating freezes in the mid-1980's drove the citrus industry out of Central Florida, as the owners of our local orchards were faced with the expense of replanting their entire crops—or selling out to developers who were eager to obtain the land on which their dead trees were sitting.
One of our first projects at our new house was to plant a Marsh white grapefruit tree. We nursed it through the freezing time, and for years it provided some of the best grapefruit I've ever eaten. After our local source of Page oranges disappeared, we doubled our "citrus grove" by adding a Page orange tree, and we enjoyed its fruit for many years.
The unusually cold weather of the 1980's moderated, sparing our trees, but the troubles of Florida's citrus industry were far from over. Production peaked in the 90's but the turn of the century brought one deadly attack after another: the Mediterranean fruit fly (Medfly), citrus canker, and several hurricanes that destroyed trees and spread disease and pests all over the state. The pressures of growth and development swallowed many struggling groves. And then in 2005 came citrus greening, a vicious bacterial infection spread by the invasive Asian citrus psyllid, which came to us from China through Mexico. That absolutely devastated Florida's groves, taking our own two trees with them.
The bridges don't fall down immediately. — Bret Weinstein
It's been 20 years since citrus greening came to our state, and the full effects accumulated slowly. Other than the deaths of our own trees, I didn't realize the extent of the damage until about a year ago when I picked up a carton of orange juice from the grocery store. Our favorite brand had long been Florida's Natural, which was reliably not from concentrate, guaranteed squeezed from Florida oranges. But that day I stood there in the middle of Publix, staring at a container of orange liquid that was neither natural nor from Florida: it was made from concentrate, and from Brazilian oranges. Keeping the Florida's Natural name took a lot of chutzpah.
For more of the story, including some out-of-the-box efforts being made to keep the industry alive while searching for a permanent solution, you can read the informative article from which I have pulled a few quotes (emphasis mine).
Florida harvested a record 244 million boxes of oranges during the 1997–1998 season. This year, the Department of Agriculture estimates that Florida will produce only 12.2 million boxes, a stunning 95 percent drop in a little less than 30 years.
Occasional freezes, catastrophic hurricanes, and an on-and-off, decades-long battle with the citrus canker disease proved to be frustrating setbacks for many orange growers, but the destruction of Florida’s citrus industry kicked into high gear in 2005.
The Asian citrus psyllid feeds on citrus tree leaves, causing the plant to contract a bacterial infection known as huanglongbing, commonly called citrus greening. The disease causes rapid root loss, slowly draining the life from healthy trees as they try to absorb and retain nutrients. There is no known cure.
Citrus greening has slashed total U.S. orange production by 80 percent and grapefruit production by 88 percent since 2000, according to a report from the American Farm Bureau Federation. California has now overtaken Florida to become the United States’ largest citrus producer, and nations such as Egypt and South Africa now export more oranges worldwide.
But Florida citrus farmers are not giving up.
