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Comments (107)
- markbnjThe John McPhee article that the author references was expanded into a book, and it's a great read for anyone that finds this story interesting: https://www.amazon.com/Oranges-John-McPhee-ebook/dp/B005E8AN...
- pjc50This reminds me of the collapse of the Gros Michel banana variety, also due to disease. Near-100% loss of a food crop, even a luxury one, is an alarming thing to see though.(I was wondering if climate change would be mentioned, but that doesn't seem to be critical there yet. Starting to be noticed in European grape terroir.)
- firesteelrainMy great uncle got busted for peyote during the Canker Wars because Florida was going around to all the known growers and greenhouses looking for canker. Charges were dropped because they didn’t have a warrant. He also grew legitimate plants.
- eth0upI just want to proudly, but also sadly, boast that Polk county once produced more oranges than the entire state of California.Florida was a beautiful place not long ago, but a very peculiar and aggressively anti indigenous development is redefining it daily. Things have become so strange that squalid retention ponds qualify as wetland restoration.I could rant for a while, but won't. Sarasota once produced more celery than possibly all states combined, and that helped us get through the Depression locally. But we sure did grow some oranges, and how wonderful the scent of orange blossoms are. It's something to behold.
- throw0101dMeta: giving oranges as gifts at Christmas was a bit of a thing in the past when they used to be much more rare during winter: from Valencia/Ivrea for Europeans, and California/Florida in the US.* https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/why-we-should-br...In the US the Interstate system helped reduce shipping and logistic costs across state lines, and so oranges became more prevalent and less 'special' post-WW2.
- CobrastanJorjiFascinating story. I wonder how much the earlier pesticides contributed to the problem. The story mentions it as a thing that was passing, and it makes me curious what would have happened without the pesticides.I'm also curious whether the bugs would survive if you cut down every orange tree in Florida, waited a couple of years, and then planted new groves.
- lightedmanThe Florida Orange was NEVER the Florida Orange to begin with.Of note from the story: "...because it came from China, where oranges also came from in the first place." Technically yes but also no, what we have for the modern navel orange came from a mutation that happened in Brazil in the 1800s - 200 years after its introduction from China. The parent trees for literally the entire navel orange (aka Florida aka Sunkist orange) industry are in Riverside, CA, I see them every day driving to work. The now-deceased Queen of England used to get two boxes of oranges from those very trees every year.
- cratermoonSugarcane and pineapple used to be the biggest agricultural products in Hawaii. Now they're gone.
- danso
- anonundefined
- morninglight
- fuzzfactorLooks like premature collapse of a monoculture due to excess stress, much of it a result of human effort.
- exmadscientistThe other thing that I can't help but think has seriously hurt the industry is that, between concentrate and flavor packs, almost all supermarket orange juice tastes like garbage. Fresh-squeezed orange juice is, of course, the benchmark. If you ever taste Minute Maid back-to-back with fresh-squeezed, well, you probably won't be buying Minute Maid again any time soon. It just doesn't even taste like oranges. There are a few brands available (the expensive ones, of course) that do come close enough to actually taste like oranges, but when the mass-market product falls that far down in quality, you can't help but wonder how anyone still wants to buy it.
- BoneShardIt was a sad day for me when I realized that a glass of orange juice(or any juice in general) isn't much better for your health than a can of soda and probably even worse than diet/zero coke.
- HardwareLustIt's not who killed it, it's what killed it and the answer is greed.
- peacechance[dead]
