Glass of Sunshine

Every time you pour a glass of orange juice there’s a good chance it’s from my hometown. Highlands county is ranked as the third top producing citrus county in the state of Florida and therefore the roots of the citrus industry are entangled with the financial stability of my area. While the product of the farmers’ toil may be likened to sunshine, our history is anything but sunshine and rainbows. The citrus industry has been in a steep decline over the last twenty years due to diseases that kill the trees and devalue its fruit, natural disasters that drown 8 months of growing in twenty-four hours, and an overabundance of importing from foreign countries. In order to revitalize an industry that is the economic lifeline for my community we need to fund research opportunities that propose solutions to citrus greening, educate consumers on the importance of this commodity, and encourage large scale companies to start purchasing fruit from local producers vs. turning to foreign fruit.