TAMPA TRIBUNE December 28, 2006
Name The Surprise Threat To Florida's Citrus Industry
LAKELAND - Florida's citrus growers live under siege.
For more than a century, farmers of the state's trademark crop thought they had fought it all: Developers with big bags of cash. Migrant labor shortages. Brazilian competition. Hard freezes. Hurricanes. Canker. "It's part of the business. It's what we in agriculture are all about," said Dennis Broadaway, general manager of the Haines City Citrus Growers Association.
But this industry used to fighting for its livelihood didn't expect its latest battle - one it can't win with pesticides, researchers or old-school sweat and tears.
Today, Florida's citrus industry faces a dire management-level labor shortage. The crop of college-educated scientists able to care for a complex and rapidly changing industry is disappearing as quickly as the groves that once dotted the state's landscape.
The number of citrus production majors at Florida Southern College in Lakeland is down to eight, less than a third of what it was five years ago. The University of Florida, like similar large agricultural programs, handed out 78 percent fewer horticulture science degrees in 2005 than it conferred at the start of the decade.
Those now running the packing houses and production lines - managers retiring in about a decade - are worried. Skilled leaders to help Florida maintain its place in the competitive global citrus market may not be around to take the mantle.
"It's on the forefront of our minds," said Broadaway, a board member of Florida Citrus Mutual, the Lakeland-based trade association. "I personally see a big void coming up in the next 10 years." Students Getting Scared AwayFarming has been in Norman Todd's blood all his life. The LaBelle citrus man who never wandered far from farming is hiring managers preparing for a new citrus industry, one with an increasing presence of large corporate groves and a handful of mom-and-pop operations.
"When I started my first job in 1958 at the citrus station, I could drive tractors and check for bugs. I was in hog heaven," Todd said. "Today you hire someone … he doesn't get to drive a tractor. He's all tied up [dealing with] with government regulations."
Although some think improvement will come from ramping up traditional student recruitment, others dare growers to shift their management systems to include more consultants and specialists from noncitrus disciplines.
"This is just another challenge, and we're going to work through it and beat it," said Harold Browning, director of UF's Citrus Research and Education Center at Lake Alfred.
Two or three times a week, Florida Southern citrus Professor Tim Hurner gets the call: another grower looking for potential managers. Nearly every citrus production major gets a full-time management job before they finish the one-of-a-kind citrus science program, he said.
One graduate, Kevin Thomas, has been on the job with Florida's Natural cooperative in Bartow a decade. Day-to-day struggles, such as maintaining a predominantly migrant-labor work force, make the career unappealing to those unfamiliar with citrus.
"It's painting a bleak picture," Thomas said. "Those around it, it's in their blood, and they're going to go into it."
Blame for the looming labor shortage points to canker and greening disease, urban encroachment and hurricanes. Those factors accounted for the loss of 17 percent of the state's trees since 2004.
Those gloom and doom realities and the associated media onslaught are scaring students away from a career in farming, educators and growers say. As it is, fewer citrus progeny are pursuing the family business, shrinking the pool of future leaders.
"It's like advising somebody going into the auto industry. Even growers aren't sure," Hurner said.
With these distractions, it's easy to forget that citrus continues to be Florida's second-largest industry, generating an estimated $8.5 billion this year and employing 76,000 people. This year's crop, though small, is bringing growers some of the highest crate prices ever.
A forecast released last week shows that oranges a decade from now could fill 132 million to 187 million boxes, near or above this year's crop of 140 million boxes. Grapefruit is expected to decline steadily from this year's crop of 26 million boxes, the Florida Citrus Commission reported.
The crops all depend, however, on how the state's 650,000 acres are affected by hurricanes, canker and greening, a relatively new bacterial disease hitting Florida's citrus industry, said Mike Sparks, chief executive of the Citrus Mutual trade association.
"We just don't know," he said.
Matt Carter has heard all the naysayers. When the 23-year-old graduates from Florida Southern in May, he will launch his own caretaking business in the Florida groves he loves.
"My whole life, people have told me the industry is dying and I'm crazy," Carter said. "But right now, I'm looking at the highest prices I've ever seen."
'Will There Be A Job?'Florida Southern and its citrus program are as deeply rooted in each other as the dozens of mature orange trees planted across the liberal arts college. The citrus horticulture program there morphed from a training service for troops returning from World War II.
Its salad days were around 1980, when 75 students were studying the horticulture science specialty, said Malcolm Manners, the citrus department chairman. Many students then came from the families or towns where citrus ruled.
Devastating hard freezes in the late 1980s wiped out a huge swath of groves and companies in North and Central Florida, and with it went a natural pool of prospective students.
Since 2000, the number of citrus production majors at Florida Southern has dropped to eight from 28. Likewise, the number of horticulture science students during the same period decreased to 38 from 56. At UF, horticulture science majors also declined since 2000, to five from 23.
Florida Southern President Anne Kerr said she has seen students steer clear of majors in industries facing uncertain futures. This dip is similar to banking-related studies in the 1980s, when scandals rocked finance.
"The decline in enrollment has nothing to do with what we're offering," she said. "It's about the perception that, if a student majors in it, will there be a job? The students and their family are wondering about the opportunity."
Kerr said the citrus production major is safe, but its long-term health depends on how much industry leaders show a need for college-level citrus management training.
"I think a lot of what happens in the industry will determine what happens with our academic programs," Kerr said.
Todd, a Florida Southern citrus advisory board member, worries the program is endangered if recruitment and endowment support doesn't increase quickly.
Time Is Precious, Competition Is ToughAfter five decades harvesting Highland County groves, Marvin Kahn struggles to replace his skilled production managers who get snapped up by big corporate growers.
It used to be Kahn could groom a grove hand for 10 to 20 years at his Sebring caretaking and grove development company. Today's rapidly changing and complicated business climate make that impossible.
"You used to be able to hire a man who grew up on the farm," said Kahn, a UF citrus production graduate. "There's not time to do that anymore."
The management shortage can be seen at colleges across the country. A 2005 U.S. Department of Agriculture and Purdue University study expects the number of U.S. agricultural science graduates through 2010 to be 20 percent short of the number of farm management job openings.
And though Florida's fields and groves are increasingly losing acreage to subdivisions, farming is expected to grow, according to state labor statistics. Farm manager demand should grow to 11,000, just more than 1 percent through 2014.
Todd said today's shifts are tied to intense competition from places such as Brazil and Africa. "These people are more intense, more hungry than we are in this country," Todd said. "That's what makes these courses so damn important."
New Way To View ManagementThat sense of urgency led Florida Southern's advisory council to prepare a DVD and slick brochures about the citrus and horticulture programs. Hurner is taking the recruiting materials to trade groups across the state, hoping growers will mentor and attract potential students.
Browning, whose research at Lake Alfred lets him work with students from UF and Florida Southern, said it's not just horticulture science students who can pursue citrus careers.
He points to a recent jump in UF food and resource economic majors. That study track increased enrollment to 153 from 63 since 2000. That counteracts the 78 percent drop in those studying horticulture science.
Browning challenges citrus industry leaders to change their management structure to tap high-skill majors, such as mechanical engineering and computer science.
"There has to be some cultural shift in the way they look at management," Browning said. "These skills may be found in three or four people. It's hard to find one person who has it all."
Companies need to be careful hiring people who don't understand agriculture, said retired Brevard County grower John D'Albora, who graduated from Florida Southern's first citrus production class in 1949. He double majored in economics to understand the business, but first and foremost calls farming his passion.
"People sitting in an office cannot create a good environment for any agricultural environment," he said.
Although he sold off his company's last 1,000 acres of groves for development last year, D'Albora has faith the state's citrus community will continue to dominate the global market.
"This industry is too good an industry, and it's been too good to Florida to just let it go," he said.
That's because, although few in number, the new citrus leaders carry the same passion as the old guard.
"You just have to know there's going to be good times and bad times," said Carter, the Florida Southern student. "It's a cycle."
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