Florida's citrus industry takes big hit

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Millions of citrus trees have been burned, thanks to canker.

The United States Department of Agriculture announced Wednesday that it doesn't believe citrus canker can be eradicated in Florida, so it says it will no longer fund the controversial program to burn millions of trees around infected trees.

The government has spent millions of dollars and burned millions of trees over the past decade to eradicate the bacterial disease that damages trees and ruins fruit.

But it couldn't keep up with the rapid spread of canker in the past couple of years.

The canker burning program started in Miami and had reached as far north as Polk County last year. But hurricanes in 2004 and Hurricane Wilma in 2005 spread it to hundreds of thousands of new acres of trees.

Canker has become so widespread that, if the burning program continued its current practice, so many acres of groves would be destroyed the citrus industry couldn't survive.

Florida Agriculture Commissioner Charles Bronson issued a press release saying based on USDA's scientific analysis of the potential spread of the disease from the 2004 and 2005 hurricane seasons, a new management plan must be devised.

Growers may have to live with canker as a nagging problem. One of the things they'll have to do to survive is to develop new varieties of trees that are more resistant to canker.

"I know that growers are a resilient bunch," said Casey Pace of the Lakeland-based grower's organization Florida Citrus Mutual. "We've been through freezes. We've been through all kinds of things and we're still here. I think you'll see changes in the citrus industry, but I don't think you'll see it go away."

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