From the Grove: Clermont’s Changing Citrus Landscape
Walking through Uncle Matt’s Organic headquarters, you’ll find the walls covered in bright, beautiful images of our organic juice being used to create the most delicious citrus-inspired dishes. Interspersed within those colorful photos, you can feel the history of the company come alive through plaques of past awards won to framed magazine and newspaper articles touting the company’s partnerships and successes. If you look even closer among the less colorful wall décor, you’re drawn to the black and white photos of sprawling, beautiful orange groves.
Note that those photos are colorless and dated. They aren’t a reflection of the Clermont, Florida you’d see today. With new businesses popping up everywhere, constant construction of homes and the rush hour traffic on highway 50, it’s hard to imagine a time when this suburban bustling city didn’t exist. If we could press a rewind button to a time before some pretty significant natural events took place that impacted the orange groves, you’d see a very different landscape.
Sitting down with Benny McLean, this is the Clermont he remembers. This is the Clermont he fell in love with 50 years ago when his family moved to the top of ‘Sugarloaf Mountain,’ one of the highest points in Florida. Nowadays it’s still a quiet mountain top, but there are neighboring houses surrounding his couple acres of property. Back in the 70s, the closest neighbors were miles away. In between his family’s home and those neighbors, there were citrus groves for as far as the eye could see.
So, when did this all change? How was the family impacted by Citrus Greening? It might come as a surprise to know that Greening wasn’t the beginning of the end of citrus’ prime for Clermont. There were a few other events that preceded the epidemic that affected the citrus industry.
Two deep freezes in the 1980s devastated citrus production in this area. Much of the groves couldn’t be revived after the first freeze. While replanting the trees was an option, it takes years for citrus trees to mature and to begin producing fruit. While many growers did replant, their efforts were thwarted when the second freeze of the decade put them back at square one. Growers were faced with a decision: to replant once again or to sell their property for land development. Due to the financial losses over the past several years, it was no surprise that selling off the land was a more profitable decision.
While this was a significant blow to Clermont’s citrus industry, not all of Florida was impacted by the frigid temperatures. In fact, areas south of Central Florida continued to thrive and produce citrus throughout the 90s. The McLean family maintained their grove in Clermont and worked closely with other family members in south Florida where citrus was abundant.
Things took a turn in the early 2000s when the invasion of the Asian Citrus Psyllid brought Citrus Greening Disease to the orange groves of Florida. In fact, 2002 was the last record citrus production for the state at 242 million boxes of citrus. In recent years, production has been a fraction of that, and today, dwindling still.
Growers have once again found themselves with a decision to make, except this time the impacts were statewide, not just in Central Florida. Growers could replant the groves where Greening spread and work to combat the disease in the new plantings, or they could sell their land for development. With the uncertainty of Greening and no known cure at the time, many Florida growers opted again for stability, and thus they sold.
While this sounds like a sad story of the end of citrus, it’s all about perspective. At Uncle Matt’s Organic, our Research and Development team has made tremendous progress in combatting Citrus Greening Disease. There is still no cure for the trees already infected, but there is a lot of promise for newly planted trees and our ability to deter the Asian Citrus Psyllid organically. You can read more about that here and here.
Furthermore, while much of the land that once held sprawling acres of groves has now been developed, fortunately Florida hasn’t run out of room for new citrus growth just yet. With continued research and trials, Florida may never return to being the citrus capital it once was, but that doesn’t mean it won’t be on the map. There is still so much potential for regrowth, and with the state’s historical ties to this great fruit, it’s hard to imagine Floridians ever letting it go completely. As fourth generation citrus growers, the McLean family has no plans to let up on citrus research and dreams of farming groves successfully anytime soon.