South Florida’s $700 Million Fruit Industry Threatened by an Insect
A $1.6 billion agriculture industry in Florida’s Miami-Dade County is essentially at a standstill thanks to a swarm of hungry insects.
“It pierces it, lays its eggs, causes obviously a very unpleasant condition in that fruit when those eggs are laid in there”, he said.
So far, Florida’s agriculture commissioner Adam Putnam has quarantined 85 square miles of farmland infected by the wave of burrowing pesks, according to Newsweek.
Officials are keeping a close eye on the invasive fly fight in Florida, and say they could use a stronger aerial pesticide spraying campaign if it looks like the Oriental fruit flies are on the increase. The Oriental Fruit Fly has attacked hundreds of varieties of fruits and vegetables in Florida, which was spotted for the first time near Miami few weeks ago.
“We estimated that we have mamey alone about 500,000 pounds left on the trees”, says Salvador Fernandez, operations manager at J&C Tropicals, in a statement reported by NPR.
Agriculture officials stopped the production in most of the parts of the Redland farming area two weeks ago, when they detected the Oriental Fruit Fly. Also in the balance are traditional market crops like tomatoes, peppers, beans and squash, which should be planted soon. “As for dragon fruit, that leaves 20 million pounds on the trees potentially”. That may indicate the measures undertaken to remove the pest are working.
No crops are allowed to leave this quarantine area after the Oriental fruit fly was discovered and so far 159 flies have been counted in the outbreak. That’s approved by federal and state authorities, but it’s costly.
The avocado crop has already been hit by a drought and another type of pest, making it a hard year for the growers. “There’s a lot of people that just don’t have the cash flow to sustain these kinds of losses”. The farmers want the government to spray the fruit crops, but if they do it with any other chemical besides GF-120, the organic farms will lose their certifications for three years, according to The Miami Herald. But even a population as small as this gives the authorities reasons for concern: what makes the Oriental fruit fly so devastating, Putnam says, is that it affects more than 400 crops.