State citrus acreage falls to new low

LAKE WALES — Florida citrus acreage fell to a new low at 454,973 acres, a loss of 25,148 acres, or 5 percent, compared to 480,121 acres last year, according to a report released Thursday by the Florida Field Office of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Polk County led the state in citrus acreage loss over the one-year period, down 6,505 acres to 69,950 grove acres, still the most in the state. DeSoto County, east of Sarasota and Venice, has 67,610 grove acres.

“I’ve been hoping for the last three years to see a turnaround,” said statistician Candi Erick, who retires in December as the Field Office’s state administrator. “I thought this might be the year.”

If there’s a silver lining to the numbers, it’s that many of the lost acres in Polk were non-producing abandoned groves or marginally producing groves, said Larry Black, general manager of Peace River Packing Co. in Fort Meade, which has a packinghouse and more than 2,000 grove acres.

“Over the last year, a lot of marginal acreage has been taken out,” Black said.

The USDA did not survey abandoned acres this year because of staff and budget cuts, Erick said. Its 2016 survey showed Florida had 130,684 abandoned grove acres, including 8,533 acres in Polk.

The Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services last year offered incentives to owners of abandoned groves to clear them while still preserving the property's greenbelt property tax break.

Mark Wheeler of Wheeler Brothers Inc., a Lake Placid grower, said incentives to clear abandoned and marginal acres was the reason behind much of the acreage loss.

“If someone was on the edge thinking about pushing up his grove, the incentives were probably a factor,” he said.

In addition to the incentives, Polk also lost a lot of citrus acreage in the northeast around Davenport and Haines City to residential development, said Wheeler, a Winter Haven native.

Florida continues to lose acreage because many growers are reluctant to replant or start new groves under the threat of citrus greening, Black said.

Since the discovery of greening disease in 2005, Florida’s citrus harvest has fallen by more than 70 percent.

Over that period, citrus acreage has declined from 748,555 acres in 2004, according to the USDA report.