Some bad news - Florida Oranges

From National Public Radio:

Time Is Running Out To Save Florida's Oranges
It's not been a good year for Florida's citrus industry. The U.S. Department of Agriculture reports that, for the second year running, the orange crop is expected to be almost 10 percent lower than the previous year.

The culprit is citrus greening, a disease that has devastated Florida's oranges and grapefruits, and has now begun to spread in Texas and California.

A bit more:

"I can't imagine Florida without commercial citrus," says Harold Browning, director of the Citrus Research and Development Foundation, an industry group that is focused almost entirely on one problem: defeating citrus greening.

The disease is caused by a bacterium that's spread by a tiny flying insect called a psyllid. Greening ruins the fruit, making it bitter and unmarketable, and eventually kills the tree.

Browning says the disease � which originates in Asia � was first discovered in Florida just eight years ago.

"Within three to four years, it had spread pretty much through all the producing counties in the state," he says. "And then with time and with the transmission by psyllids, it's filling in the gaps."

Scientists and growers now say virtually 100 percent of Florida's groves are infected with citrus greening.

It can be prevented through spraying but the increase in cost is high:

In one of Boyd's groves of Valencia oranges, he's been doing the intensive spraying. Many of the trees have branches with yellowed leaves and shrunken fruit associated with the disease. But large sections are productive, with plump oranges ready for picking.

It's a stopgap measure, and Boyd says one that comes with a high price: His costs went from about $750 an acre to about $2,200 an acre.

Boyd says as long as citrus prices remain high, he and other growers doing this intensive spraying may keep their heads above water. But unless scientists find a cure for greening, he says it's just a matter of time before economic realities and the disease force him out of the citrus business.

We have our own share of agricultural pests here -- for apple trees, the Apple Leaf Curling Midge is a new and bad one.