Editorial: A welcome sign of more greenbacks for greening fight

For citrus growers in Polk County and throughout Florida, 2018 will be the season to forget.

The persistence of the citrus greening disease combined with Hurricane Irma to drive production in the groves to the lowest level since World War II. Then, as the industry was digesting that depressing circumstance, Canada last week announced that effective July 1 it was following through on retaliatory tariffs on orange juice to smack the Trump administration for its increased levies on imports of aluminum and steel. Roughly 95 percent of the oranges grown in Florida end up as juice, and Canada is America's largest foreign market for that liquid variety. The tariffs appear so draconian that one of President Donald Trump's natural allies, the 3-million-member U.S. Chamber of Commerce, recently unveiled a campaign to torpedo them. Reuters reported that the chamber is highlighting the debilitating effects state by state — more than $700 million in Florida goods are affected — and spending "to help elect like-minded candidates who back free trade, immigration and reduced taxes." Additionally last month, at the yearly gathering of Florida Citrus Mutual, the industry's trade association, attendees heard that Congress' inability to enact immigration changes, in response to the administration's hard line, has growers fretting about labor availability. Lawmakers have discussed capping the agricultural guest-worker program that supplies the people who pick 80 percent of Florida's citrus crop.

Still, hope springs eternal. "We look forward to a quiet, resilient season in the fall," Shannon Shepp, executive director of the Florida Department of Citrus in Bartow, told The Ledger when the U.S. Department of Agriculture's final crop estimates in mid-June confirmed the misery.

We'll see if Shepp's right. For now, though, the staggering citrus industry may get a much-needed boost.

Last week U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson announced that the updated farm bill contains $125 million for citrus research. The funding, which the Florida Democrat included in the measure, would be doled out in $25 million increments, beginning in 2019. That would continue an ongoing program that, with Nelson's advocacy, was included in the current farm bill.

Over the last few years, the USDA has spread the current pot of dough to researchers dotting the nation from the University of Florida to Washington State University. Scientists have studied, for example, how to combat greening at the genetic level, how to develop bactericides and therapeutic proteins for plants, how to fend off greening with heat therapy.

In a recent opinion column, Florida Citrus Mutual CEO Mike Sparks noted that research funding, especially when reaching the Lake Alfred-based Citrus Research and Development Foundation, has fueled an evolution in "grove level solutions" for greening.

"The practices have sustained and in some cases improved yields even with 100 percent (greening) infection," Sparks wrote. "These are real life production improvements uncovered by growers and scientists over the past decade. And although they won’t garner flashy headlines that the media will latch onto, they will provide a bridge until long-term answers are uncovered."

"We are making headway thanks to the CRDF and others and I continue to be very optimistic about the future of Florida citrus," Sparks added.

One might argue they have little choice since, at the bottom, there is only one way to go — up. That's because no one wants to consider Nelson's observation about the outcome if greening's devastating effects are not arrested. 

"If we don’t find a cure to this deadly disease soon, we won’t be growing oranges in Florida much longer,” Florida's senior senator said last week after the Senate voted 86-11 for the bill that included his funding request.

Amen.

The House has already passed its version of the farm bill. Lawmakers from both houses must now hammer out the details. Staffers for U.S. Rep. Tom Rooney, an Okeechobee Republican who represents growers from southern Polk to points further south, tell us it's likely Nelson's request will be the minimum amount remaining in the final bill.

That's certainly good news. So for the sake of the incomes of our growers and their workers, and for their collective sanity, please, Congress, leave the greening research funding intact. Your attention and the taxpayers' money are yielding results. Let's not stop now.