Citrus forecast up for first time in a while

ARCADIA, Fla.- The USDA is predicting a slightly larger citrus crop this season as growers continue battling with citrus greening.

“I would say that 98 percent of the trees that we have are infected,” said Kevin Shelfer, owner of Joshua’s Citrus.

Hundreds of acres of citrus trees, but the majority of them produce very little fruit.

“It’s cut our crops in half from what they were 12 years ago,” Shelfer said.

Joshua’s Citrus in Arcadia, a family owned farm for more than 130 years, is feeling the effects of a bug from China known as the Asian citrus psyllid.

“You see this tree here? It’s got a lot of dead limbs on it? That’s because the roots are dying in the ground.”

Very few leaves and barely any fruit are common characteristics of trees infected with HLB disease, commonly referred to as citrus greening. The disease is responsible for cutting Florida’s crop by 70 percent over the past 10 seasons.

“Twelve years ago, we were picking 400 boxes to the acre and now we’re picking 150-200 boxes of fruit to the acre,” Shelfer added.

The USDA is now predicting a stronger growing season than originally thought, raising the estimate 3 percent this season to 71 million boxes.

But farmers are still struggling, waiting for things to turn around.

“Over the past few years it’s just been trial and error. We’ve tried everything. We try everything that comes along to see if it works,” Shelfer said.

Consumers see higher prices for the produce at the store because there is less of it on the shelves. Joshua’s Citrus says it had to cut employees and no longer ships commercially because they don’t have enough fruit to fill orders.