Florida’s orange groves buffeted by hurricane, disease

Vernon Hollingsworth grew up in Florida among his family's orange trees, recently ravaged by a double whammy of disease and a hurricane that have sent juice prices spiraling and left farmers blinking in disbelief.

On a recent March morning, the fifth-generation farmer drove a pickup truck through the rows in his grove, pointing out the damage from Hurricane Ian last fall such as uprooted trees.

"I lost 95 to 97 percent of my crop," the 62-year-old told AFP, adding "we're going to have to rebuild, and we need help to do that."

But the hurricane is only the latest blow.

In Florida, the world's second largest producer of orange juice after Brazil, groves have been suffering from a citrus tree disease called Huanglongbing (HLB) for the last 17 years.

A bacteria spread by an insect, the Asian psyllid, causes the disease, which makes trees produce a green, bitter fruit that is unsuitable to sell, before dying within a few years.

The double crises of Ian and HLB have wreaked havoc on the industry, which is so integral to Florida's identity that the orange is even on the state license plate.

Orange production in Florida is down 60.7 percent from last season, one of the lowest figures since the 1930s, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates.

The hurricane alone caused the state's citrus sector losses of $247.1 million, among $1.03 billion to the overall agricultural economy, according to estimates from the University of Florida.

The situation is particularly painful for Hollingsworth, because the season was looking promising before Ian struck his 4,200 acres (1,700 hectares).

For the first time, he had begun injecting his orange trees with two bactericide treatments recently approved by U.S...