The geographical point 27°34'37.32"N 80°38'45.02"W reveals a sun-soaked orange grove owned by Peterson’s Groves & Nursery situated on the peninsula of Florida, in a town called Vero Beach. According to a representative from Peterson’s, the farm is not organic and consists of two locations- one 20-acre and one 13-acre. All oranges are harvested by hand and tractors are used for mowing. Multicropping is the method used to grow the orange trees as no fields are left fallow. Peterson’s Groves offers an assortment of citrus fruits throughout the year such as oranges, tangerines, grapefruit, and tangelos.
Overall, the presence of orange groves in Florida carries a variety of benefits such as they provide a habitat for over 159 species and the citrus industry brings in over 3 billion dollars annually. Despite these advantages, the Florida citrus industry is on a downward spiral on …show more content…
China is believed to be the origin of this bacterial disease. The Asian Citrus Psyllid is the cause of the mayhem and was discovered in Florida in 2005 and all counties that produce citrus were found to foster the disease in 2015. A citrus tree is infected once the psyllid, scarcely the size of a sunflower seed, feeds on the leaves, transferring the bacteria to its new victim. The citrus produced by infected trees is unusually green, misshapen, and falls prematurely from the tree. Fruit of this variety are most often unacceptable to be sold or in some cases, used for juice. Once a tree has been contaminated, it will ultimately die as there is currently no cure. The toll this miniscule bug has taken on the citrus industry is devastating; approximately 120 million less boxes are produced yearly compared to 1996. In fact, many groves have already succumbed to greening as there are 130,000 acres of abandoned orange groves in the state of Florida