Growers air their concerns about the disease that has ravaged the state's citrus trees.
By S.I. ROSENBAUM
Published November 16, 2005
TAMPA - Some of the state's largest citrus growers met in private Tuesday to discuss the growing threat of citrus canker.
Hosted by the Florida Land Council, a lobbying group made up of the state's biggest landholders, the five-hour meeting at the state fairgrounds was also attended by state Agriculture Commissioner Charles Bronson and Congressman Adam Putnam, R-Bartow, among others.
Although reporters were excluded from the meeting, Bronson and deputy commissioner Craig Meyer said that members of the citrus industry were looking to the state for answers to the citrus canker epidemic.
At issue, Meyer said, was the "1,900-foot" rule: when citrus canker is discovered in a tree, all the trees within a 1,900-foot radius must also be destroyed.
He said citrus growers wanted to know: "Is there something else? Is there any research going on? Is there a cure? Is there hope?"
But Meyer and Bronson said they could not give the growers much hope.
Nor could Putnam.
"As a layman, it's hard for me to believe we can get our arms around this disease," he told the Lakeland Ledger. "We got $250-million from the federal government so far. I think it's fair to say the appropriators run when they see me coming."
The 1,900-foot rule is based on the distance the airborne bacterium that causes canker can travel under ordinary conditions.
New research has reconfirmed the figure, Bronson said. "The number's legitimate," he said.
Last year's hurricanes blew canker-causing bacteria even further.
The state-federal Citrus Canker Eradication Program has destroyed or targeted for destruction more than 9.6-million citrus trees over 73,245 acres in Florida from Aug. 12, 2004, the day before Hurricane Charley hit Florida, and Nov. 2 this year, the Ledger reported.
Hurricanes blow canker-causing bacteria far and wide. Before Hurricane Wilma, Bronson said, teams with flame-throwers raced across the state to burn infected trees before hurricane winds could spread the disease.
It's too soon to tell whether they were successful.
The growers' most pressing question, Meyer said, was whether there would be a "tipping point" after which the state could not eradicate citrus canker - either because the canker has become uncontainable or because the eradication project has become more expensive than the government can afford.
Meyer said he told the growers that neither point has been reached.
"At the end of the day," he said, "the meeting concluded with support for the existing 1900-foot" radius.
