Citrus greening is killing an industry. Meet the Central Florida grove growing a solution

ORLANDO, Fla. – Note: This story is originally a special episode of the News 6 podcast Your Florida Daily. Tap the player above to listen.

Growing up in Central Florida, there’s an expression I’ve heard a lot from people who have been here for a long time.

People usually point to a new neighborhood or office building and say, “I remember when it was all orange groves.”

For a long time, growing citrus was Florida’s most valuable export.

Today, oranges are more popular than ever, though it’s no secret that Florida’s citrus industry has seen some significant shrinkage — mostly thanks to a tiny bug that causes this thing called citrus greening.

Don’t worry — this special episode of Your Florida Daily isn’t just some sad history lesson about oranges.

I just think there’s a disconnect between what we eat and where that food comes from.

When was the last time you were at the grocery store and actually looked for the small print that shows exactly where that banana was grown or where that Florida orange juice actually comes from?

I can tell you right now that the shiny, bright-colored orange you picked up at Publix was not grown here.

You can still get your hands on real Florida sunshine, but it requires driving outside town where the last of the orange groves still grow.

Butrico Groves

I took a drive out to Mims – a small town near the north tip of Brevard County – to see what an active citrus grove looks like.

To be honest, I’m only used to seeing dead ones.

The owners of Butrico Groves greeted me at the front. Lee Bird owns the land that the citrus grove is on and Ronnie King currently runs the place.

Butrico Groves used to be owned by a guy named Bill Butrico. He ran the place for decades until Lee bought it from him in the summer of 2000. That’s a funny story I’ll tell you about later.

Growing Florida oranges

Citrus is not native to Florida. It’s actually native to Asia.

“It was carried here by the explorers,” Bird said.

These were Spanish explorers more than 450 years ago. Did you know the sweet oranges we all know and love are a hybrid fruit?

Growers these days use a technique where you plant what’s called a “sour” orange tree – basically a seedier leathery orange tree with fruit that tastes kind of like vinegar – and impregnate it with a sweet orange bud.

You bandage up the surgery with some tape and wait for a month — and this is where the magic happens.

You remove the Band-Aid and that’s where a sweet orange starts sprouting out the side.

A few months later, you chop off the sour orange part, which is called the rootstock, and the sweet orange grows up from there.

“We gotta wait at least eight years to see what that fruit is going to taste,” Bird stated.

You read that right.

Eight years until you know whether all of that planting, trimming and watering was even worth it.

It’s a gamble citrus farmers like Lee and Ronnie take every season, but they have science on their side.

Fred Gmitter is a professor of Citrus Genomics at the University of Florida.

“We’re really one of the very few places where organized citrus breeding has been taking place in the middle of this disaster,” Gmitter said.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is altering the genetics of sour orange rootstocks (the plant that starts the growing process) and sending them to groves like Butrico.

Yes, that means all oranges are GMOs.

“Don’t be so quick to badmouth GMO. We’ve been doing GMO for a long time. Just look at the apple industry! So it’s not all that horrible,” Bird said.

Citrus greening

Citrus greening is a disease that comes from tiny bugs called the Asian citrus psyllid.

For almost 20 years, this bug the size of a chili flake has been sucking the nutrients and money out of every Florida orange grove.

“They fly to the neighbor’s tree and infect his tree and then they go to somebody else’s tree or the next grove down. It just spreads and spreads and spreads,” Ronnie King said.

Butrico Groves doesn’t use pesticides; instead, they find ways to live with greening rather than defeat it.

“We like to say the oranges are like people,” King said. “You can’t judge them by the color of their skin or what they look like — it’s what’s on the inside that matters.”

Ronnie snaped an orange off a tree, whipped out a pocket knife and cut out a perfect little wedge for me to try.

It was delicious.

“That’s what a Florida orange is supposed to taste like,” Bird said.

Looking at these oranges, it’s hard to ignore the fact that they aren’t very orange. They’re green and yellow with this brownish dust color on the outside, called rust mite.

When tourists visit the grove, the owners love showing people that this is what an orange is supposed to look like.

“It makes the fruit ugly. So ugly fruit always tastes the best,” Bird said.

Butrico Groves doesn’t let you pick your own fruit for this reason.

Lee said customers sometimes ask why the fruit isn’t ripe or why it’s dirty instead of orange and glossy.

“That orange that’s in your grocery store (is exposed) to ethylene gas that turns it yellow. Then they drop it in red No. 5 dye, known carcinogen, and the yellow skin and the red dye combined to make them orange,” Bird said. “A uniform covers over all the imperfect color laying in the grocery store.”

Keep that in mind the next time you decide to zest one of those things.

While you’re at the grocery store, take a closer look at the orange juice section.

Not a single major brand offers OJ made solely from fresh Florida oranges anymore, including Florida’s Natural.

If you look at the fine print, it now says it uses a blend of juice from Florida and Mexico.

That switch happened in 2022, according to Truth In Advertising.

That was a tough year for a lot of Florida’s citrus farms thanks to two back-to-back hurricanes.

“It killed a lot of trees. It just did a lot of damage,” King said.

A Florida squeeze

For $25, you can get a half bushel of hand-picked oranges from Butrico Groves.

Each one goes through a giant homemade contraption that washes and waxes each one before King handles each with care.

Many of their customers are in other states. The owners demonstrated how they package each box with six oranges, Easter egg grass and a little note.

“A little handwritten card, ‘We can’t be there to give you a hug. So here’s a Florida squeeze. Love from mom and dad.’”

Within a day, the boxes of oranges are shipped off all over the country.

The sign that changed everything

Lee Bird has a great story about how he and his wife, Barbara, got into the business.

He said in 2000, they took a trip down to Florida to root for his favorite team, Virginia Tech, playing in their bowl game.

Bird wanted to bring some fresh oranges back to Virginia and after passing a couple of groves, slowed down and pulled into Butrico Groves.

He noticed a sign that said the grove was for sale but Lee didn’t think much of it. He bought a half bushel and said goodbye to Bill.

“I always said, ‘Wouldn’t it be nice if all you had to worry about was little bit of weather and whether the crop was going to come in,’” Bird said.

When they got back to Virginia, Barbara was catching up on emails when she saw one pop up from the pastoral associate at the hospital where she worked.

“It said, ‘Don’t be afraid to go out on a limb. That’s where the fruit is,’ and Barbara said, ‘I swear I believe this is a sign, we need to check into this.’”

He came back down to Florida, made a deal and a few days later, Bill Butrico sold him Butrico Groves.

“The next day at six o’clock in the morning I’m up here with a U-Haul and it is 90 degrees — at six o’clock in the morning! And I thought, ‘Dear god, what have I done? I have upset the whole apple cart and moved to Hell, USA,’” he said.

Bird eventually got acclimated to the weather and still thinks back to that email.

“Had it not been for that thought of the day, we’d never bought this place,” he said.

Despite the trials and tribulations of growing citrus, Lee said he’s right where he wants to be.

The next generation

Ronnie King and his wife, Zeppelin, now run the place.

“I never thought I’d be a farmer because it’s such hard work,” King said.

They moved to Florida 12 years ago and King eventually found a job at Butrico Groves making $8 an hour.

“I’ll never get rich on it, but I’m happy. My bills are paid, I go to bed every night with a smile on my face and I wake up every day with a smile on my face. Life is good,” King said.

A sweet future

Growing sweet oranges in Florida may not be what it used to be, but there are signs that a comeback is possible.

The state is pouring millions of dollars into rootstock research, so a new healthy variety resistant to greening could soon be developed.

Lawmakers are also trying to cut some of the strict standards imposed on the citrus industry.

However, none of these solutions are possible without local growers carefully cultivating these fragile plants and keeping their fertile land for citrus – not suburbia.

“I’m 70 years old,” Bird said. “I don’t need a million dollars. I got a daughter that lives a block this way. I have everything. Nah, I wouldn’t sell (the grove).”