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Citrus Greening Disease

roadrunner said:
I just happened across this story by accident. Nice to see that Florida is not the only place dealing with this problem....
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How long has this problem been in Florida? It's not the only place in the US, and as far as I believe, has been found in Louisiana, Georgia, S.Carolina, Belize and East Mexico.
It is already apparent in China, Africa, India, Mauritius, S Asia, and the Arab peninsula.
I can't really see that it's ''nice to see Florida is not the only place....'' especially as food shortages are becoming a huge problem for so many - and I only see this news as a huge global catastrophe in the making.
 
It started in Florida around 2005. Before that we produced about 300-million boxes of citrus, but have been declining since the introduction. In the 2022-2023 season we only produced about 20-million boxes, but some of that was also due to hurricanes.

And it is spreading across the country and is in California now, but hasn't hit them really hard...yet....Apparently, hurricanes are really good at spreading this bug around, which makes sense, since they don't appear to be very mobile, despite the fact they are winged insects.

I have two trees that get hit by these bugs every year, but in the last year not too bad...I don't know why, but we'll see how bad this year. I don't really care, since I'm not much of a fruit eater, I'll just leave the trees for the Swallowtail butterfly that uses them as a host plant. That's why I never spray anything, regardless if it's organic or synthetic.


As for Florida's citrus industry, they were, IMO, unsustainable anyway, I'd rather see theses industrial areas done away with and replaced with regenerative farming, because we have major problems, as most do, with water contamination from runoff, as well as many other environmental issues associated with conventional farming.
 
Citrus groves were started in Florida in 1870. I wouldn't call that "unsustainable", would you, really ? If we just gave up on growing citrus in florida, you'd be paying twice the price for orange juice and grove lands wouldn't be replaced by regenerative farming, the soil is sandy. It would be replaced by housing developments.

They'll just spray with dormant oils and keep them at bay.
 
I must say that I agree wholeheartedly with regenerative farming. If the whole world could get back to good husbandry of the precious commodities we were first provided with, everyone would have work, and the whole balance of nature might - eventually - be restored. However, greedy and lazy mankind managed to upset the balance somewhat and start spraying poison everywhere, and priorities were gradually changed.
Why did humanity think it could improve on what was already perfect?
 
Anniekay said:
Citrus groves were started in Florida in 1870. I wouldn't call that "unsustainable", would you, really ? If we just gave up on growing citrus in florida, you'd be paying twice the price for orange juice and grove lands wouldn't be replaced by regenerative farming, the soil is sandy. It would be replaced by housing developments.

They'll just spray with dormant oils and keep them at bay.
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This is a huge topic, so large I don't really know where to start and I also don't know how to make it short; so I'll just touch on the topic.

Our farming methods in the 1870's were much different than today; however, the big, big change came shortly after WWII with the massive use in synthetic chemicals. In the beginning these synthetic chemicals really helped in producing tons of food and the negative environmental effects were not too noticeable.

Yet as the years went by we've seen the negative effects, but the counter argument is always that we can NOT produce the amount of food without these industrial methods, which I say is debatable.

However, even if we can not produce at the same level, do we need to? Look at how much food we use for biofuels, which is being proven to be more environmentally damaging than not using them. Look at all the grains we feed to feed industrial produced beef and all the negative effects of that, not only on the environment, but also our health...And then we got the obesity problem virtually all countries are experiencing.
Check out the book: What Your Food Ate


Regenerative ag is NOT just a repackaging of Organic Ag, which in my opinion is only slightly better than conventional farming. Regenerative Ag is mimicking nature, which doesn't need man-made fertilizers/X-icides to grow plants and they have millions more years of experience than us. No one fertilizes the Redwood forest, yet they seem to get plenty of N2 to grow to monstrous sizes.


I'm going to cut it off here, but this 4-minute video is very good at showing cattle farmers that have switched to Regenerative Ranching. And there are just as good videos out there where people like Gabe Brown talk about his experience with Regenerative Farming, much of which are traditional crops, such as corn.


A good quick 4-minute introduction by the Carbon Cowboys project.


 
So, @roadrunner nobody is going to argue that chemical fertilizers are not the best. We don't eat Redwood trees. What would grow in the sandy florida soil is not anything we CAN eat so, if you want OJ at less than $10 a jug, the orange trees are going to stay. It seems like, and correct me if I'm wrong, you're on a campaign to eliminate the growing of orange trees because you believe they are the main cause of polluting the ground water due to chemical fertilizer usage.

In the 1870's we had horses which provided tons of fertilizer every year. Now we have PETA who has systematically caused the decline of horse ownership with their closing all the slaughter houses so people have horses dieing in the fields making them useless for bonemeal. My point is, times change and those who can grow organic are, those who can't can't.
 
roadrunner said:
This is a huge topic, so large I don't really know where to start and I also don't know how to make it short; so I'll just touch on the topic.

Our farming methods in the 1870's were much different than today; however, the big, big change came shortly after WWII with the massive use in synthetic chemicals. In the beginning these synthetic chemicals really helped in producing tons of food and the negative environmental effects were not too noticeable.

Yet as the years went by we've seen the negative effects, but the counter argument is always that we can NOT produce the amount of food without these industrial methods, which I say is debatable.

However, even if we can not produce at the same level, do we need to? Look at how much food we use for biofuels, which is being proven to be more environmentally damaging than not using them. Look at all the grains we feed to feed industrial produced beef and all the negative effects of that, not only on the environment, but also our health...And then we got the obesity problem virtually all countries are experiencing.
Check out the book: What Your Food Ate


Regenerative ag is NOT just a repackaging of Organic Ag, which in my opinion is only slightly better than conventional farming. Regenerative Ag is mimicking nature, which doesn't need man-made fertilizers/X-icides to grow plants and they have millions more years of experience than us. No one fertilizes the Redwood forest, yet they seem to get plenty of N2 to grow to monstrous sizes.


I'm going to cut it off here, but this 4-minute video is very good at showing cattle farmers that have switched to Regenerative Ranching. And there are just as good videos out there where people like Gabe Brown talk about his experience with Regenerative Farming, much of which are traditional crops, such as corn.


A good quick 4-minute introduction by the Carbon Cowboys project.


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It is indeed a very important general subject. Things with the farmers in our country are very difficult at the moment as you will, no doubt, be aware, and I was listening to the following fairly short piece of a longer conversation between Mark (the bowler hatted farmer) and his friend. The rest of the chat is in episodes, so that each video is just a chunk of the whole.

 
By chance I just happened across this video of a Regenerative Citrus grower, in Georgia. Very rare in the orchard business for regenerative growers; although, I believe that's slowly changing.

At about the 4-minute point of the video they mention Permaculture Orchard, which is a Regenerative-like orchard up in Canada, which I've known about for quite some time. This is his website, but he also has many videos on YouTube. https://www.permacultureorchard.com/



This is the Regenerative citrus grower in Georgia who was interviewed by Justin Rhodes


 
Chicken and geese are brilliant for catching and devouring bugs - like vine weevil for example, for which there is no other predator seemingly.
This chap can't really decide if he's an organic gardener or not.
 
Tetters said:
Chicken and geese are brilliant for catching and devouring bugs - like vine weevil for example, for which there is no other predator seemingly.
This chap can't really decide if he's an organic gardener or not.
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Yeah, from what I gathered in the video he has not been doing regenerative farming that long, probably only 3-years. He said he does have an organic certification, but he does seem to mostly focus on Regenerative farming.

In the US many Regenerative Farmers/Ranchers are NOT organically certified, because it's just a bunch of bureaucratic nonsense. I think organic farming was probably a good thing years ago, but nowadays it's a mess -- I'm talking specifically the Govt (USDA) run Organic program.

Many Regenerative Farmers/Ranchers far exceed those govt standards, but they can't put an organic label on their products because the term Organic is regulated by the USDA.

I buy meat from White Oak Pastures, a Regenerative Farm in Georgia and their packaging is not labeled Organic, but it's better than any "Organically" grown meat. The USDA is why I'm against Organic products.
 
roadrunner said:
Yeah, from what I gathered in the video he has not been doing regenerative farming that long, probably only 3-years. He said he does have an organic certification, but he does seem to mostly focus on Regenerative farming.

In the US many Regenerative Farmers/Ranchers are NOT organically certified, because it's just a bunch of bureaucratic nonsense. I think organic farming was probably a good thing years ago, but nowadays it's a mess -- I'm talking specifically the Govt (USDA) run Organic program.

Many Regenerative Farmers/Ranchers far exceed those govt standards, but they can't put an organic label on their products because the term Organic is regulated by the USDA.

I buy meat from White Oak Pastures, a Regenerative Farm in Georgia and their packaging is not labeled Organic, but it's better than any "Organically" grown meat. The USDA is why I'm against Organic products.
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I wouldn't say that we are totally against any organically grown food, but as you say the problem can so often be in the labelling and the bureaucracy.
We have, just lately been doing our homework on all matters food - which has been highlighted mostly by the plight of our farmers and the governments war on their livelihood and future, putting us all in harm's way. For this reason, we are being extra careful about how our foodstuff is sourced, and some of the best places to obtain properly produced stock for the kitchen.
We are casting out some of the factory produced vegetarian stuff in favour of properly produced meat where the cows have a well grown grass based diet.
This kind of thread was well considered @roadrunner and a valuable addition to this forum.
 
Seems there is a Bill outlawing Roundup and we all know the horrors of Roundup.

I'm guilty of using synthetic Fertilizer for Crops but at the time we didn't use Roundup we cultivated our Crops.

Now Farmers are arguing they need Roundup. If you throw in synthetic Fertilizer you wouldn't hear the last of it.

The last year I have been going Organic. Done plenty of reading and from what I gather our food is killing us and we're killing the soil.

It all is a matter of conveyance. I worked as a Dough Mixer in a large Bakery we use to take 8 hours to make fantastic tasting Bread. Just before I Retired they cut that time in half by putting out crap but it still looked like Bread.

Yes food may go up but I also think Medical Cost will come down.

big rockpile
 
Got to thinking about this more. What if they did away with Social Security and 401K.

There would be a very Big uproar but it was done before the family took care of the aging and sick. It is still done in many countries.

We are blessed with a son that helps out and if he didn't we would be out thousands of dollars. What is bad we have 6 kids 5 don't care. And yes we draw Social Security but we would be ok if we didn't have it.

big rockpile
 
Tetters said:
I wouldn't say that we are totally against any organically grown food, but as you say the problem can so often be in the labelling and the bureaucracy.
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You may hear me bash organically grow foods a lot, but don't take offense. I'm speaking specifically with respect towards foods grown Organically under the USDA program. Technically, I also grow organically, but I resist using that term, because of the connotation applied thanks to the Govt's USDA program.

What's funny is that this is one of the only words heavily regulated by the USDA (which comes with a special seal), other words, such as Natural are supposedly regulated, but not really and don't come with any special seal, so you see some incredible misuse of the term Natural, as well as others, such as Free Range, Grass Fed....

This may just be a US thing, I don't know, so another reason not to take offense when I bash Organically grown foods. In the US Organically grown food, under the USDA, has nothing to do with building soil.

And to be fair, I think some have co-opted the term Regenerative, who actually don't practice soil regeneration and mimicking nature. They can easily do this, since there's no certification process.



BTW, USDA is the United State Department of Agriculture. Just another govt bureaucracy
 
It's a matter of following the money.

I know I find very exciting Butterfly's and Bees visiting me and I do what I can to make Soil Microbs happy which I can't see.

So many don't care about Microbs and go straight to the plant and in this Society they want everything instantly.

big rockpile
 
roadrunner said:
You may hear me bash organically grow foods a lot, but don't take offense. I'm speaking specifically with respect towards foods grown Organically under the USDA program. Technically, I also grow organically, but I resist using that term, because of the connotation applied thanks to the Govt's USDA program.

What's funny is that this is one of the only words heavily regulated by the USDA (which comes with a special seal), other words, such as Natural are supposedly regulated, but not really and don't come with any special seal, so you see some incredible misuse of the term Natural, as well as others, such as Free Range, Grass Fed....

This may just be a US thing, I don't know, so another reason not to take offense when I bash Organically grown foods. In the US Organically grown food, under the USDA, has nothing to do with building soil.

And to be fair, I think some have co-opted the term Regenerative, who actually don't practice soil regeneration and mimicking nature. They can easily do this, since there's no certification process.



BTW, USDA is the United State Department of Agriculture. Just another govt bureaucracy
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I think I recognised where you are coming from, and agree. My whole idea of the right kind of food growing, is to follow the way nature works - whatever the terminology, and whichever country. My whole belief relies on how I see God provided for us, and follow that lead as closely as possible. No man's supposed self intelligence, or conceptions of his own worth will better that - not even if he happens to be a rocket scientist ! :giggle:
 
Tetters said:
I think I recognised where you are coming from, and agree. My whole idea of the right kind of food growing, is to follow the way nature works - whatever the terminology, and whichever country. My whole belief relies on how I see God provided for us, and follow that lead as closely as possible. No man's supposed self intelligence, or conceptions of his own worth will better that - not even if he happens to be a rocket scientist ! :giggle:
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True, but God helps those who help themselves. Where would we be without Polio and other vaccines? My poor Aunt got Polio when she was 16, could barely talk, hands, legs and arms crippled and distorted. We were given intelligence, thing is, USE it. 😄
 
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