Who Killed the Florida Orange? Deep in Desiccated Groves, I Saw Some Haunting Answers.

Posted by Several_Initiative_2@reddit | collapse | View on Reddit | 36 comments

Interesting article describing the collapse of the orange industry in Florida, historically one of the great producers in the United States. The article highlights a combination of overuse of pesticides that weakened trees, leaving them vulnerable to new diseases from abroad, the impact of changing weather, including increased hurricanes and frost, deregulation that allowed suburban sprawl to crowd out old groves, competing demand for the sand that orange trees grow in, and the role of private equity in hollowing out companies.

Collapse related because it's a microcosm of how short-term economic incentives hollow out the agricultural sector, precipitating economic and ecological disaster. I would love to hear from anyone actually in Florida, or with first-hand knowledge of similar crop decline in other areas.

https://slate.com/comments/business/2026/04/florida-state-orange-food-houses-real-estate.html

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FlyingDiscsandJams@reddit

My parents lived near the Tropicana factory in Indian River county. When they moved there 15 years ago, it ran 24/7, it's so dead now. Orange production is down 90% since 2000.

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theCaitiff@reddit

Back in the 90s, before Citrus Greening Disease arrived in Florida, I remember the roadside juice stands all across central Florida. I lived in Polk county back then. There used to be a Tropicana plant in Lakeland, locally known as the Juice Bowl. During the season the smell of orange oils expressed through the skins was everywhere. Stronger than any high pollen day in the spring.

And the skins! God I miss the skins. We would go to some of the roadside stands and ask them for the empty peels. They would give us huge black trash bags full of skins. Boil them in a big pot, like a crab boil. Just blanche them first, then you could scrape out the white pith with a spoon and leave just the leathery orange skin behind. Julienne that into thin strips. Back in the pot with just enough water to cover and an equal weight of sugar. Boil it for hours and bask in the scent of orange essential oil being cooked into the sugar. Pull the skins out at the right temp and keep boiling the sugar. You can pull the sugar into orange taffy and the julienned peels go onto big screens to dry.

The closed the plant in 99. The roadside stands vanished one by one as the owners sold out that priceless frontage on major roads. Citrus greening arrived in 05 and once a grove caught it, that was the end. Bulldoze the grove and put up some condos, it's over.

The scent of my youth, the homemade candy that marked the beginning of "winter", the scent of blossoms in the spring... It's all gone now. It was poor people candy but oh my god, I miss the candied peels. And the taffy was more orange than any orange soda ever was. You can't just replace fresh orange juice with bottled. You can't make real orange taffy with store bought extracts.

Something priceless was lost and is never coming back.

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hbsboak@reddit

Beautifully poetic and sad.

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Magnesium4YourHead@reddit

This makes me want to cry.

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crystal-torch@reddit

Thanks for sharing this. As a northerner I know nothing of the traditional uses of oranges, sounds wonderful

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theCaitiff@reddit

I write as if in mourning of the death of citrus, but there's nothing stopping you from making orange peel candy on a small scale. It just won't be the seasonal milestone of my nostalgia. If your family eats oranges, save the skins in a bag in your freezer until you have a gallon bag or so.

It's really just three ingredients, water sugar and peels, and one of those is a waste product. Some recipes will tell you to slice them into strips and leave the white pith on but to boil them several times and change the water. My family boiled them whole, scraped out the pith with a spoon until just the outermost skin was left then sliced into strips. Scraping the pith out entirely makes a crunchier candy instead of a chewy one if you leave it on, and one boil versus several, but it's a little more hands on.

Anyway, once they're done you can dip in melted dark chocolate if you like the orange/chocolate combo, eat them as is, or drop a few in a cup of tea.

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crystal-torch@reddit

So cool! I’d love to try it sometime. The taffy sounds amazing. I just really appreciate that sense of place, where there’s a crop that’s important to the area and then people find uses for it. I live in Vermont and love the local traditions we have that mark the change of seasons and connect us to the land and each other. I’m sipping my coffee with maple syrup in it right now that was produced down the road. We are surrounded by farms and I get to enjoy some amazing local food. I love Vermont because it feels like one of the last places where that experience still exists and hasn’t been bulldozed for strip malls and condos

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pennydreadful20@reddit

I grew up in SW Florida (Charlotte Co.) in the very early 90's and this makes me so sad. Orange blossoms are my favorite smell. Everyone had orange or some kind of citrus trees in their yards. I love citrus but I can't grow it where I live currently. Not outside in the ground. I do have a potted lemon tree but she's young and not ready to produce until next year possibly. Thanks for sharing your memories.

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winterbird@reddit

Add an underrated part of the tree - the leaves. They smell amazing.

AE_WILLIAMS@reddit

I would say the main component was the forced removal of private citizens citrus trees, around 1984-87. We had a beautiful key lime, and some grapefruit trees, and were told to cut them down or be fined. There was absolutely nothing wrong with them, and the nearest grove was 20 miles away.

This happened throughout Florida, and effectively killed off the pollinators and seed plants (yes I know about grafting citrus).

When they blew Orange County trees away, that was the death knell.

Haveyounodecorum@reddit

Why? What on earth is the justification?

A cynical person might suggest that orange growers from other places might have appreciated the loss of competition...

Coco_Cannibal@reddit

And noone with an orange tree in the garden is going to buy oranges, was my first thought, because that's how I think Americans think.

Nope, as I replied elsewhere, it was a disease outbreak. The citrus canker epidemic in the 1980s caused a lot of trees to be slashed and burned. If you had one confirmed case in the area, everyone cut and burned to control the spread.

I lived in Florida at the time. Once the crisis was over we all replanted new trees.

Of course it only worked for a little while. Citrus Greening is here now, and unlike the canker which is a bacterial disease, CGD is spread by insects. Once it's in an area, thats it. Fruit are now smaller, misshapen, less sweet, much more bitter, and just less orange. Eventually the disease is fatal to the trees. Nothing you can do.

Necessary-Start4151@reddit

Everywhere new invasive pests and diseases are killing our forests and grasslands. Our past world is over everywhere!

Disease. The Citrus Canker epidemic of the 1980s was destroying groves. OP frames it as "oh they forced us to kill our family tree because of the commercial growers profits" but it's much more like poultry culls during the recent bird flu outbreak or livestock culls when they catch a single case of anthrax in a region. If anyone catches a case of the disease, everyone culls.

Which is unfortunate given that Citrus Greening disease eventually killed the industry anyway.

"Citrus canker" also known as 'not pretty enough for the stores' disease.

I lived in Florida since 1963, and not one person gave two solid dumps about this in their backyard fruit. Because it wasn't an issue.

Until it was, the State got involved, declared an 'emergency' and everyone in our neighborhood lost trees planted in the 1940's, 50's and 60's. The local farmers were furious at having something like this put them out of business.

You know who wasn't furious? California, Mexico, and other countries that exported to the US.

alphaxion@reddit

My guess would be to control pollination and eliminate any randomness... which is usually a recipe for disaster.

There needs to be variance in pollination to ensure plants can adapt. Just another example of how the attitude of humanity causes such disaster (pesticide use, rather than cultivating a healthy biome where predator species can help to control "pest" species is better for the whole food web)

disasterbot@reddit

The night they drove old OJ down

SnooPoems1106@reddit

I didn’t know that. How stupid of them and awful.

DelcoPAMan@reddit

And typical.

Seversevens@reddit

When I found out they store so-called fresh orange juice in a big fat vault and add a shit load of orange sourced chemicals to make it taste consistent, I immediately stopped drinking it honestly

Yeah same and it tastes awful

unoriginal_user24@reddit

I remember reading an article about this exact process and had the exact same reaction, haven't missed it at all.

Now I enjoy fresh citrus from a grove near me. Fresh picked and squeezed juice is amazing!

Electrical_Prune6545@reddit

Orange juice is basically sugar water with vitamin C added. May as well drink a soda and pop a multivitamin.

raisin22@reddit

Tr yeah, Tropicana has never tasted like an actual orange

SergeStorms42@reddit

Grew up in a Florida town that had an orange juice plant. It was the primary employer in town. With the frost line moving further and further south and growers competing against, iirc, South America Orange imports, the plant eventually closed and many people lost high paying jobs and the town suffered for decades.

Greening and the expansion of subdivisions and strip malls, to me seemed the final nail in the coffin for citrus in Florida.

I have great memories of my grandma’s backyard grapefruit and orange tree that the family helped pick each year and juiced up the harvest. When I got my first house, 20 years later, I planted a grapefruit. After a year it got hit with greening and needed to be removed.

I miss the smell of the groves when the trees bloomed and if the wind was blowing right you could smell oranges across town from the plant.

Jinzot@reddit

I grew up in FL and frost was always a major issue for the orange groves. The extra effort put into saving them drives up costs (they basically wrap them in plastic by hand; more plastic consumption, yay!)

ttystikk@reddit

I'm going to bet that will be less of a problem going forward.

Adequate and consistent water, on the other hand...

And competing land use is going to be a big problem. Developers need to be encouraged to redevelop aging areas and brown fields rather than destroying prime agricultural land.

beard_lover@reddit

But the developers have bought the local politicians, and argue that they get more from their product when they build flashy new suburbs away from “crime.” Infill isn’t as profitable, and sadly profits and greed drive everything.

I once lived in Florida so I know their mindset all too well.

They really don't give a fuck about sustainable development or land management.

pippopozzato@reddit

There are problems that humans find very difficult to solve. When ever someone says "humans will solve the problem", the story of The American Chestnut Tree gets told to them.

The greatest ecological disaster in US history is the loss of the American Chestnut Tree. The tree itself was magnificent & huge, the wood did not rot, and was very good to work with. There is a saying that your crib was made of American Chestnut and so was your coffin.

The tree dominated the forest of most of eastern USA and a blight (disease) wiped it out. They have been trying to bring it back for over 100 years now. One challenge is when the tree gets cross bred if you use too much of the cross breed then your final product is not very close to an American Chestnut Tree, and the cross bred trees seem to do ok until they hit 17 years old and then they die.

A forest dominated by American Chestnut Trees means a forest floor covered with chestnuts that supported an entire ecosystem.

Yeah we have been living in a world of ever diminishing returns for some time now ... LOL.

goddamn2fa@reddit

What about people no longer drinking orange juice.

Isn't it mostly sugar? Like nearly the same amount as a Coke?

RichieLT@reddit

You can’t beat a good glass of fresh orange juice though, fa better than coke.

Polyzero@reddit

The citrus industry took reactionary measures rather than precautionary ones every step of the way.

First they grew them tall, tall enough that hurricane Andrew snapped them apart in the 90s And the terrible trio in2004. Least they weren’t as tall then.

Then they suffered from citrus greening, dropping profits and now in a diseased industry with no clear solution. It became hard to justify continuing with the industry as housing growth and property values skyrocketed making exiting the industry very lucrative. With newer regulations in place attempting to curb the worst of these considerations it led to an exit from the industry state wide.

Some swapped to growing palm trees instead. May i now introduce you to “lethal bronzing” which now can devastate those crops as well?

Eventually there wasn’t a single good reason to grow oranges and the smell of orange blossoms became a memory of the past.

church-rosser@reddit

Orange you glad they didnt say....