Putnam: Citrus industry could collapse in two or three years

Florida Commissioner of Agriculture Adam Putnam was in Pensacola last week. He met with Inweekly to discuss the issues facing the state’s agriculture industry.

“Well, the citrus industry is a $10 billion economic driver for the state and it is in dire straits,” said Putnam. “The disease that is ravaging the industry is called citrus greening, which originated in Asia. We have the smallest crop we’ve had in modern history.”

He said the citrus output has been cut in half. “Ten years ago, the citrus industry in Florida was somewhere around 200 million boxes. We’ll be lucky to be 100 million boxes this year. It was a 900,000-acre industry, now it’s less than 500,000 acres. “

Putnam said that citrus greening causes the fruit to fall off the trees before it’s picked. “So you’re spending money all year long to set a crop, and then it falls off just when you’re ready to go get it, and over time it influences the taste of the juice as well.”

According to the commissioner, growers have been putting millions of dollars into research. The state’s been putting millions of dollars into research. The federal government has made a commitment. However, the issue is not resources, it’s time.

He said, “This is a race against time, to identify what the most promising treatment or cure is for the disease.”

Putnam said the state’s citrus industry is much smaller than five years ago.

“Small growers—investor growers, your mom and pop, your lawyer who took a five acre as payment for some divorce case—those guys are all out of it,” he said. “You’re now seeing full-time family farms, whose full-time occupation for two generations, or three generations, has been the citrus industry, they’re now exiting or on the bubble.

When asked how much longer can the citrus industry last without a cure for the disease destroying its crops, Putnam wasn’t optimistic.

“I think you’re probably two years away, maybe three from seeing it collapse if there’s not an answer, and if people owned their land outright, they have a little more flexibility, but if they borrowed money to buy growth, they can’t possibly be hanging on.”