Citrus industry feels squeeze from Irma, waits for help

More than a decade ago Paul Meador's family sold its  last pieces of land in Orange County, Florida — where they grew oranges — tired of dealing with crop-damaging freezes.

The growers moved farther south to start over on what they saw as safer ground in the state.

These days, Meador, a fourth-generation Floridian who owns Everglades Hauling & Harvesting in LaBelle, isn't happy about the move. A recent tour of Bear Hammock, one of his Valencia groves in Southwest Florida, reveals why. 

Hurricane Irma ravaged the grove off Immokalee Road near the nature preserve Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary, delivering a double whammy that knocked fruit and trees to the ground, leaving Meador with a big, costly mess to clean up and millions of dollars in losses. 

"I would trade freezes for hurricanes now," he said. 

The massive storm walloped citrus crops in Florida's five top-producing citrus counties: DeSoto, Polk, Hendry, Highlands and Hardee. Groves in Hendry and Collier, where Meador gave a tour, were especially hard hit.

Before Irma, the citrus industry's impact on the state's economy was estimated at $8.6 billion a year. Last season, nearly 437,000 acres of citrus were grown in Florida, generating roughly 45,000 full-time and part-time jobs, according to Florida Citrus Mutual.

A preliminary damage assessment released by Florida Commissioner of Agriculture Adam Putnam estimates Hurricane Irma's toll on the state's agricultural industry at more than $2.5 billion. Florida's orange crop suffered the most, taking a more than $760 million hit.

The damage from Irma — estimated to have taken out as much as 70 percent of Florida's orange crop this year — will have a ripple effect. Their local economies are heavily dependent on the business of agriculture, especially in rural areas such as Immokalee and LaBelle.

Less work for farmers means less work for pickers, processors and others — from the caretakers who fertilize their trees to the accountants who keep their books. With less money in their pockets, farmers will tighten their belts in other ways, spending less at local stores and restaurants.

About 90 percent of Florida's orange crop becomes juice. With oranges in shorter supply, juice drinkers could feel Irma's pain in another way.

Much will depend on whether Brazil — the world's top producer of oranges and orange juice — will make up for the shortfall. If not, some commodities experts have predicted juice prices could reach as high as $8 a gallon, which may only worsen declines in consumption caused in part by the flood of competing beverages on grocery shelves.

"Tastes have changed over the last 20 to 30 years. Orange juice hasn't been cheap for years," said Kevin Sharpe, owner of Basic Commodities, a commodity broker in Winter Park. 

The hurricane didn't just hurt this year's crop. Lost trees will affect future harvests.

"Everybody involved in the Florida citrus industry will suffer. We'll be losing packing houses. We'll be losing processing plants. The trucking industry will be hurting, chemical companies, fertilizing companies, everybody," said Mongi Zekri, a multi-county citrus agent with the University of Florida/IFAS in Southwest Florida.

Federal aid has been slow in coming and will take an act of Congress. On Friday, Gov. Rick Scott activated a $25 million emergency loan program to support the state's citrus growers impacted by Irma. Loans will be provided interest free.

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The first day Meador saw Bear Hammock Grove after Irma, flooding made it hard to gauge the enormity of the damage. Water mixed with floating fruit and dirt looked like a soup that made the grower's stomach churn. When the 500-acre grove dried out, what he saw was enough to make a grown man cry: too many trees down to easily count.

Fruit is still scattered all over, looking like forgotten golf balls on a driving range. Trees are twisted and snapped like broken Tinkertoys. Roots are torn out of the ground, looking like eerie brown spider webs suspended in the air.

Irma damaged all of Meador's groves. He's not even sure how he'll find enough workers to help him rebuild them.

"We can't find any people as it is," Meador said. "We've got plenty of jobs if somebody wants to do them."

At Bear Hammock, he estimates he's lost 22,000 trees (a number he settled on using drone technology). He values those losses at $6 million. 

Bear Hammock suffered the most harm to the east of the eyewall, where trees fell like dominoes, leaving no space to see between the rows. The trees that toppled range from a few years old to more than 30.

Grabbing a thick branch of a fallen tree deep in the grove, Meador said solemnly: "You can see what a nice crop we had before the hurricane came through, really a nice heavy crop. It would have done a really good job of helping us backfill the losses we've had over the last 10 years." 

Citrus has been on the decline in Florida for many reasons. Groves have been lost to disease and development. At the same time, growers face more competition and declining consumer interest for their fruit and juice.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture isn't due to release the first estimate of Florida's orange crop for 2017-18 until Thursday, Oct. 12. However, a widely watched private estimate by Elizabeth Steger, a Kissimmee-based consultant, pegged the crop size at 75.5 million boxes before the hurricane, which would have been a nearly 10 percent increase over last year (after many seasons of declines).

Florida's citrus growers have struggled to turn a profit for years because of a tree-killing disease known as citrus greening, which first showed up in Florida in 2005. The Asian citrus psyllid, a tiny winged insect that's hard to combat, has rapidly spread the disease to trees around the state.

To fight greening, growers have become more aggressive with their cultural practices. As a result, growing costs have risen from less than $1,000 to about $2,500 an acre per year — without the ability to raise the price of their fruit to compensate, as price is mostly determined by supply and demand.

The irony of Irma is that it hurt healthy trees the most. 

"Healthy trees with a full canopy and loaded with fruit — they suffered the most damage. They were like a wall in front of the hurricane, so they laid over, or laid down, uprooted," said Zekri, with the University of Florida/IFAS.

More:Forecast for Florida's citrus crop drops again

Before the storm, Zekri considered the 40-acre Tropical Oaks Farm off Fort Denaud Road in LaBelle one of the most beautiful groves in Southwest Florida. He held it up as a shining example of how growers could succeed in the face of greening by working hard to fight it. The grove's grapefruit and orange trees were lush and filled with fruit until Irma showed up.

Now it looks like someone took an ax to it: Trees are toppled, trunks and branches are split, and fruit lies all over the ground. 

The Sugar Belle trees at the farm — off State Road 80 in Hendry County — bore the brunt of the storm. The University of Florida developed the mandarin orange hybrid to fend off greening, but its thick green hedge proved no match for Irma's fury.

Damage is so extensive that Martin Mason, the grower and majority owner, believes a tornado must have ripped through the grove.

"We were right in the eyewall," he said. "You cannot believe the wind that went through here."

For now, Mason is leaving the mature trees on the ground. He'll keep fertilizing them and spraying them for pests, with hopes of salvaging some fruit.

"We're in a real dilemma right now," Mason said. "We're going to keep doing what we can do and hope for the best." 

He estimates the storm knocked down a box of fruit per tree. One box equals 95 pounds of tangerines and 90 pounds of grapefruit. That fallen fruit, which is illegal to harvest, would have ended up as fresh fruit in gift boxes sold by his buyers.

"It's a complete catastrophe," Mason said. "We're really looking at over one-half million dollars of losses." 

It may be three or four years before the grove gets back to where it was before the storm. It can take a young citrus tree years to produce its first fruit and even longer to reach full production. 

Once the damaged trees are harvested in November and December, Mason and his partner, Stephen Gudz, plan to stand them back up, then prune them with a heavy hand in hopes of saving them. 

"It's just a lot of staking, staking and pruning, to get the tree rebalanced," said Gudz, who added that the job of saving the mangled trees will require an artist to piece them back together.

Mason, an experienced grower, said he purchased the farm in 2011 as part of his "retirement program." He turned 75 a few weeks after Irma struck. 

"This is my birthday present," he lamented. "I did something wrong in my life. I'm really wondering what." 

Mason has crop and tree insurance, but he doesn't know how much money he'll get from it. Other citrus growers with insurance have the same concern, as they look for ways to recoup some of their losses under their limited policies.

Gov. Rick Scott and Florida Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam have vowed to do everything they can to support the state's farmers, ranchers and growers —  and Florida's congressional leaders are fighting for emergency money to help them recover from Irma.

U.S. Rep. Vern Buchanan (R-Longboat Key) has revived a proposal to create the Emergency Citrus Disease Response Act, which would make it less costly for growers to replace trees damaged by the hurricane or citrus greening. 

"Florida farmers are facing an emergency," Buchanan said in a statement. "Between Irma and the devastating citrus greening disease, we can't wait any longer to provide citrus growers with the relief they need." 

Every member of Florida's congressional delegation in the U.S. House and Senate has co-sponsored Buchanan's bill. The House passed the bill last year, but the Senate never took it up.

Growers can already take an immediate tax deduction for the cost of replanting trees, but only if they cover the full cost. Buchanan's proposal would allow farmers to get the deduction even if they bring in investors to raise capital for replanting costs, as long as the grower continues to own a major stake in the grove. 

Buchanan expects his legislation to be included in a broader hurricane relief package Congress is anticipated to consider later this month.

Many of the U.S. Department of Agriculture programs that could offer relief to growers are underfunded and require appropriations. In a letter to leaders of the House and Senate Committees on Appropriations and the Office of Management and Budget on Sept. 18, U.S. Rep. Tom Rooney, R-Punta Gorda, asked for USDA disaster relief funding to support those programs and others to be included in any supplemental emergency relief funding bill for Irma victims.

All members of the Florida delegation signed Rooney's letter.

Ray Royce, executive director of the Highlands County Citrus Growers Association, said growers in his area didn't see as many trees fall to Irma, but losses are still significant because of fruit drop. About 12 percent of his county's land is covered in citrus, making it an important part of the local economy, he said.

Federal and state disaster relief will be crucial, Royce noted. 

"It's going to be critically important that there is some disaster relief from the federal and state governments to help growers get over this hurdle, and that is going to be important because there are so many jobs in the small communities, such as ours, that are reliant on it."

If growers don't get the relief they need, a flood of property could hit the market if they go out of business, hurting property values and the real estate market in general, Royce said.

Losing the citrus industry in the state's more rural towns and cities, he said, would be like losing the tourism industry in its coastal areas, such as Naples or Fort Myers. 

Hendry County Commission Chairman Mike Swindle described crop losses in his county as devastating, saying they'll only worsen the effects on an already weak local economy.

"We already suffer from high poverty and high unemployment," he said.

Indeed, Hendry has the state's highest unemployment rate — 10.2 percent in August, according to the Florida Department of Economic Opportunity.

Swindle sees promise in the research large growers in his area, such as Alico and U.S. Sugar, are doing to create trees resistant to citrus greening and citrus canker, a bacterial disease that mars fruit and weakens trees.

"We are crossing our fingers, hoping and praying that will be the salvation for the citrus industry, not only in Hendry, but in Florida in general," he said. 

DeSoto County Commission Vice Chairman James Selph, who has been involved in agriculture for more than 40 years, said crop losses in his area range from less than 25 percent at some groves to more than 75 percent at others because of fruit drop. Not as many trees fell in his county.

"We need an answer for citrus greening really fast to help our growers," Selph said. "For a lot of the growers, it's a way of life. Their fathers did it. Their grandfathers did it."   

He expects the smaller crop to mostly affect seasonal workers, especially harvesting crews. About 80 percent of all Florida citrus is harvested by guest workers brought in from Mexico and other countries for temporary jobs through a federal program known as H-2A.

Steve Johnson, a harvesting contractor who co-owns Johnson Harvesting with his wife in Wauchula, figures he lost half of his business overnight because of Irma. He said he'll buy a whole lot less in the communities he does business in, spending less on everything from fuel to equipment parts, and he won't bring in as many H-2A workers this year. He hopes to avoid layoffs in his office.

While his own groves did OK, 90 percent of his business comes from outside growers in 11 counties from the town of Immokalee to the city of Clermont. 

Luckily, he said, he also harvests blueberries and strawberries.

"For the guys that harvest one crop, it's really going to hurt them. They are at
more of a disadvantage than I am," Johnson said. 

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Charles Wilson, owner of SunRidge Harvesting Co. in Lake Placid, said the coming season won't be good for him, either, as profits in his business depend on volume and he keeps his prices low to remain competitive.

"You lose 50 to 70 percent of your work, the math doesn't add up," he said. "It's going to be very difficult."

He's not counting on any federal aid, and he doesn't want to take out any more loans, even if he could qualify for a low-interest one through a federal program.

"Servicing the existing loans is going to be hard enough," he said. "I don't need more loans."

At Two Peas Cafe in LaBelle, owners and best friends Debbie Klemmer and Vicki Reynolds have heard tales of woe about Irma from local growers they've served comfort food to for years.

"The ones we ain't kin to, we are like family to," Klemmer said.

One grower, Klemmer recalled, fought back tears when he stepped into the restaurant for the first time after the storm, while another declared: "It's over for me." 

Klemmer said relatives who own a small grove near the cafe have put it up for sale because of the destruction caused by Irma.

She expects to see her grower friends eating in her restaurant less often, which will hurt her business.

She's also concerned about the rising cost of orange juice, a natural and popular choice at her Southern-style diner at breakfast time. 

"We are going to be paying a lot more for orange juice, which is going to affect my business," Klemmer said. "As long as I can afford it and people will pay the price, I'll keep serving it." 

More:Get complete coverage of Hurricane Irma

Florida's shrinking crop

Here's a look at Florida's orange crop measured by the number of 90-pound boxes produced: 

2016-17: 68.75 million  

2015-16: 81.7 million  

2014-15: 96.95 million

2013-14: 104.7 million

2012-13: 133.6 million

2011-12: 146.7 million 

Source: Mongi Zekri, multicounty citrus agent for the University of Florida/IFAS in Southwest Florida.