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| 07-16-2010
You won't need a telescope to view this constellation appearing Monday in Washington.
U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson will introduce a bill that would earmark up to $30 million of federal money annually for scientific research to battle citrus diseases, said Bryan Gulley, a spokesman.
The bill would tap into revenue collected from federal tariffs on five citrus fruits and juices imported to the U.S.
"The stars are lining up," said Mike Sparks, the chief executive of Lakeland-based Florida Citrus Mutual, which has played the lead role in lobbying for the bill.
"This is the largest legislative effort Florida Citrus Mutual has ever been involved in."
The stars lining up behind the measure include Sens. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and John Cornyn, R-Texas, the other top citrus-producing states behind Florida, who are co-sponsoring the bill. Nelson and Cornyn belong to the Senate Finance Committee, likely the first to consider the bill.
"I am optimistic this bill will pass," said Dan Gunter, the chief operating officer at Florida Citrus Research and Development Foundation Inc. based in Lake Alfred, which oversees the Florida greening research program. "What happened is the stars lined up, and the (state) citrus industries have come together. If you get them working together, we can get a lot done."
Other factors created momentum to establish a stable, reliable source of funding for citrus disease research.
Chief among them was the battle against citrus greening, a deadly bacterial disease threatening to wipe out commercial citrus growing in the U.S., and the frustrated efforts among Florida citrus leaders to find enough money to finance the research effort against it, Sparks said. The bill specifically mentions the greening threat and the need to raise money for greening research.
"Citrus growers shouldn't have to ask themselves if this is the year a disease or a pest will wipe them out," Nelson said Friday in an e-mail to The Ledger.
"That's why having a permanent fund to help combat these threats just makes a lot of sense."
Florida citrus has spent about $20 million in the past two citrus seasons on greening research.
The proposed bill would create the U.S. Citrus Disease Research and Development Trust Fund under the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
It would be financed by a one-third share of revenue from the five tariffs with a cap of $30 million, according to a draft of the bill provided by Nelson's office.
Since 2004, the U.S. has collected $50 million to $87 million annually from those tariffs, including Brazilian orange juice, lemons and limes, the bill says.
A nine-member board of directors composed of citrus growers, including five from Florida, would oversee the budget and research plan. The board must have three growers from California or Arizona, the next-largest citrus states, and one member from Texas.
The budget and plan must be approved by at least seven members, preventing Florida members from controlling the trust fund. The board must submit its first budget to Congress no later than Jan. 15.
LATEST EFFORT
The Nelson bill represents the third attempt this decade by Florida citrus advocates to get federal tariff money.
A nearly two-year effort supported by former U.S. Rep. Clay Shaw, R-Fort Lauderdale, a member of the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee, sought to steer about $20 million of tariff money to the Florida Department of Citrus for its marketing programs. It died when Shaw lost re-election in 2006.
U.S. Rep. Kendrick Meek, D-Miami Gardens, also a Ways and Means member and a Senate candidate this year, picked up Shaw's effort in 2008, said Ken Keck, Citrus Department executive director.
But it also went nowhere.
Those efforts failed in part because other citrus states, which don't have government marketing agencies like the Citrus Department, objected to spending public dollars to market Florida citrus products.
But the Nelson bill calls for spending the money only on citrus research, which would benefit all 10 U.S. citrus states and territories because all of them face the threat of extinction from greening.
The first greening outbreak in Florida was confirmed in the fall of 2005, but scientists think the disease arrived shortly after the first appearance of Asian citrus psyllid, the insect host for greening bacteria, in 1998.
By 2007, greening had spread to every citrus-growing area in Florida, including Polk County, annually the state's top citrus producer.
The Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services does not report statistics on the total number of cases or the breakdown by county.
Until recently, Florida was on the front line of the greening war.
Then greening surfaced last year in Texas, which had psyllids since 2001.
Psyllids first appeared in California in September 2008 and in Arizona last year, but it has found no confirmed greening cases.
"We do believe somewhere in the state a greening case exists, but we haven't found it yet," said Ted Batkin, president of the California Citrus Research Board, which has a current annual budget of $8.75 million for research.
That budget, funded by a tax on growers, increased from $4 million in 2006 because California growers saw how quickly greening had spread from Brazil to Florida and recognized the fatal threat it would eventually pose them, Batkin said. Greening has been the board's top research priority in the past four years.
Although Citrus Mutual began working with Nelson on the tariff bill late last year, subsequent events demonstrated Florida citrus had no reliable funding source for research on greening or other diseases.
In May, Gov. Charlie Crist vetoed a bill that contained authorization for the Citrus Research Foundation to levy a tax on Florida citrus growers that would have raised more than $2 million a year for greening research. Later, Crist vetoed a $1 million 2010-11 budget appropriation for the foundation.
The Florida Citrus Commission, the Citrus Department's governing body, stepped up in June to restore that lost funding.
The department will spend more than $10 million in 2010-11 on disease research, or 19 percent of its total budget, Keck said.
But Keck and commissioners also made it clear the Citrus Department can't sustain that funding level much longer in the face of its own declining revenue sources and competing demands to spend more on marketing programs and other industry priorities.
"As with so many other things, the Department of Citrus is where the money is," Keck said. "There is arguably still a significant drain on resources for marketing."
To bolster the case for a greater marketing effort, Keck pointed to the latest U.S. retail sales figures for orange juice, which declined 6.6 percent in the four-week period ending June 12 from a year ago, the fifth straight month for declining OJ sales. For the season that began in October, total OJ sales have declined 1 percent compared with the season before.
FINDING RELIABLE SUPPORT
Gunter agreed the Florida Citrus Research Foundation can't rely on the Citrus Department and other state government sources for consistent support for disease research, particularly in the current economic climate.
"Research is a long-term investment. You don't expect to get a return in one year, two years or even three. You've got to be able to make a long-term investment." Gunter said. "All that uncertainty is something you don't need when running a research activity."
The foundation's 2010-11 budget totals $14 million, about the same as the previous year. More than 90 percent goes directly to more than 130 research projects, many of them multi-year efforts.
Although the tariff money will be distributed nationally, Gunter said he expects Florida will be the leading recipient of federal money in the next few years because of greening's prevalence here.
"How that (distribution of money) sorts out will be heavily weighted to Florida because that's where they're dealing with greening now," Batkin agreed.
Florida also will come out ahead if the money is distributed proportionate to the size of each state's citrus sectors.
"Based on production and value, I would expect two-thirds of the money to go to Florida in the short term," he said.
In the long term, the trust fund promises to provide a stable revenue source for future research against citrus diseases, such as sudden death syndrome and citrus variegated chlorosis, plaguing other countries, Sparks and Gunter agreed.
"All the citrus states know how devastating these diseases can be. Now we will have a national program to deal with them," Sparks said.
Given the realities of global trade and travel, those diseases inevitably will come to Florida, Gunter said.
Greening originated in 19th century China before spreading across the globe to Brazil in 2004 then to Florida.
Another global disease, citrus black spot, was discovered in Florida earlier this year.
"Diseases that are somewhere else today are risks to the Florida citrus industry. We've got to invest more money in things we haven't invested in before," Gunter said.
Read the original article from The Ledger.