About half of Florida’s citrus canker eradication workers will be laid off in the next two weeks – that’s about 500 people. The layoffs are the result of the state ending its canker eradication program. Growers will now focus on controlling the disease – which is what their Brazilian counterparts do. Meanwhile alternatives to citrus are also being considered. State Agricultural Commissioner Charles Bronson is pinning his hopes on Ethanol. Valerie Alker of Member Station WGCU in Ft. Myers reports.

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Milk Producers do it. So do Cattle Ranchers. Florida Orange juice makers have done it for decades – promoted their products on national television. Now Florida tomato growers are getting into the act – after a couple nasty hurricane seasons took a large bite out of profits. The half billion dollar industry kicks off its ad campaign Monday. WGCU’s Valerie Alker reports.

Researchers at the University of Florida Institute for Food and Agricultural Science are hopeful Citrus Canker can become a manageable disease. Toward that end they’re working with colleagues in South America where canker has long been endemic in the citrus industry. WGCU’s Valerie Alker has more.

Each year Florida produces virtually all the fresh market tomatoes grown in the United States from December to May and about half the domestically produced fresh market tomatoes in the country. New varieties of tomatoes are sometimes introduced. Genetic material for some of these new varieties comes from the Tomato Genetics Resource Center at the University of California at Davis. Roger Chetelat (sheh-tuh-lay) directs the Center – he’s recently returned from a trek across Chile – looking for wild relatives of Florida’s domestic tomatoes.

He spoke to WGCU’s Valerie Alker.

Citrus Canker is a contagious bacterial disease that poses no threat to humans – but seriously diminishes trees’ fruit production.

Citrus is the sunshine state’s second biggest industry, behind tourism – generating more than 9-Billion dollars a year.

Mark Fagan with the state’s Citrus Canker Eradication Program says hurricane Wilma spread the disease to such an extent eradication is out of the question.

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“It was determined that it could affect anywhere from 180 to 220 thousand acres of citrus. So as a result the USDA determined that the eradication of citrus canker just simply was not feasible anymore.”

The state’s eradication program HAD called for the destruction of ALL trees within 19-hundred feet of an infected tree.

Fagan says that’s no longer the plan – but that INFECTED trees will still be destroyed, just not potentially EXPOSED trees.

There are somewhere between 6 and 7-hundred thousand acres of citrus in Florida. If the 19-hundred foot rule continued to be used, it would have meant destroying nearly a third of the state’s total crop.

A high-ranking official from the U-S Department of Agriculture says he’ll do everything he can to help Florida growers recover from this year’s hurricane season. U-S-D-A Deputy Secretary Chuck Conner and two Congressmen took a tour of agriculture damage in South Florida Monday. Later they met with growers in LaBelle. W-G-C-U’s Valerie Alker reports.

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Florida U-S Senator Mel Martinez and Representative Mark Foley toured citrus groves destroyed by Hurricane Wilma this week. The Republicans pledged to lobby for federal compensation to help citrus growers. They’re also working on an agriculture bill to help farmers whether they specialize in citrus, dairy, horticulture or sugar. Meanwhile, State Agriculture Commissioner Charles Bronson toured battered farmland in LaBelle, pledging to lobby for state help. WGCU’s Amy Tardif reports.

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