Over the past two decades, citrus production in our state has dropped 90%.

That.

According to a recent report by Florida Tax Watch.

Recently, Southwest Florida's biggest grower, a LeEco, announced it will no longer grow citrus because of financial challenges from citrus greening disease and hurricanes over recent years.

In a statement, the company said most of its land will likely be used for other agricultural purposes and that about 25% of its land has development potential.

Citrus growers are fighting for financial survival across our state.

We visited one farmer in Arcadia to understand why.

You'll find all kinds of citrus growing at Joshua Citrus in Arcadia, but these groves are a painful sight for owner Kevin Shelfer and his son Caleb.

Trees like this one don't have much time left.

It's dead, but they don't know it yet.

Like most of the trees on the company's 300 acres, it's plagued by citrus greening disease.

But it should have 30 or 40 years left.

It probably may not have a year left.

Their citrus production has dropped by about 90% in recent years.

It hasn't been working out for citrus in general for every grower, for the past probably ten years.

You know, they're out here struggling.

Citrus greening, a deadly bacterial infection, strangles the tree.

So fruit struggles to grow.

The citrus is often not a sweet or as big as it should be.

That's why in the store now, you don't see a lot of big grapefruit from Florida.

Hurricanes have also dealt another painful blow.

Ian really hit us hard.

Their trees sat in Ian's flood waters for days, making compromised trees more vulnerable.

The company estimates they've lost about 15,000 trees in three years.

It's a similar story across the industry.

It's heartbreaking to see all the citrus going away and probably will never come back.

It's especially heartbreaking for the shell first, because their family has been growing citrus on this land since the 1880s.

We've been scraping by, and the reason that we continue to do this is for the love of the land and for the love of Florida, what old Florida used to be.

This is what it is, and we don't want to see that go.

But they understand why some growers walk away and sell to developers.

They say they've lost money on citrus crops the past three seasons.

There's no other crops to really jump into that's going to make you that money back.

And the only crop is is houses.

You cannot say no to someone that offers you millions of dollars for a piece of land.

That's that to you is losing money.

If it weren't for our store and and what we do over there, we would have had to close the doors by now.

Joshua Citrus is embracing change, marketing public events at their store, selling more than just citrus to customers, and offering agriculture tours.

The Shelford struggle to understand why there hasn't been more federal support for citrus.

Their best hope now is that scientists working on an answer to citrus greening succeed soon, but they know a solution is years away at best, so they'll continue to look at how to diversify sales, perhaps dabbling into new crops like avocados.

We are looking, but I don't mean where you want to go.

Do something else.

Possibly we will have to one day.

Joining us now is Paul Meador, Florida Citrus commissioner for district one, which includes Collier, Henry and Lee counties.

He's also the president of Everglades harvesting in La Belle.

Thank you, Paul, for joining us.

We appreciate it.

Thank you for having me.

So you are a fourth generation grower.

Help us understand how difficult it is for growers right now to survive economically.

Well, it goes back almost 20 years now.

So shortly after the year 2000, we had, citrus canker was discovered in Florida.

There was an effort to try to eradicate it.

So many acres were lost during that period of time.

And that was followed by Hurricane Charley, Frances, Gene and then Wilma, which, covered just about every producing area in Florida.

At the same time, we found it is a bacterial disease called one alone.

Being one of being, weakens the state of the tree.

So all of those things combined, was a perfect storm to to get us on our heels.

And then since then, we've we've struggled with the disease, one long being, which is citrus greening, the formal name for citrus greening, and suffered some additional hurricanes, Irma, Ian and the most recent hurricane in this past season.

So, it's it's been a difficult stretch of time.

Of course, we we mentioned earlier that Elko is ending its citrus production.

What does that mean for the future of the crop in southwest Florida?

Well, it creates a couple of challenges.

I guess the first one is the greatest concern that many of us that are still citrus growers have been struggling for many years now trying to find ways to stay in the citrus industry.

Many of us are very passionate about it, but there's also a lot of infrastructure around the industry.

We had a million acres, in 2000 today, probably less than 100,000.

If you take Aliko out of the the total acreage in Florida.

So all of the of the structure the tractor dealerships, the chemical retailers, the employees that help us with day to day operations, all of that has been contracting.

So that's a probably one of the most serious parts of, of it.

But in addition to that, the individuals that are left like myself, we haven't been able to generate any real revenue to, to put back on to, back into our farms.

So that we're prepared for the future.

You know, at some point, you have to be profitable to make, to make, to make any business work.

And we're no different.

And so the infrastructure continues to, collapse around us, which makes things even more complicated for us.

Will citrus production survive in Florida?

I remain optimistic that it will.

We have, an an injection or a therapy now that will, will assist us.

Going forward.

It doesn't necessarily help older trees that have already been impacted by it, by citrus greening in the hurricanes, but younger trees, healthier trees that have not been, grossly impaired by the disease.

As far as Florida's place in, in in the world of citrus, has California replaced US or other countries at this point?

You know, certainly the production has been picked up from other places, in the world.

Not, not necessarily California, California groves, a, piece of fruit that is, better suited for the produce section to be eaten whole.

They do create some juice for.

But that's not the lion's of what they do.

But Brazil, Mexico, along with a few other countries, produce some juice, fruit that have.

And they're having the same problem.

So they're filling they're backfilling what we're not doing to a certain point.

But at the end of the day, the world is going to be sort of, forced to some grapefruit juice because of the disease.

Paul, thank you for what you do.

And thank you for your time.

Thank you very much.