The Orange is one of the most ancient fruits known to man. Believed to have originated in the Himalayan foothills, this fruit was created by breeding pomelos and mandarins, and is first mentioned in 314 B.C. by the Chinese. Much of their origin is still clouded in obscurity, but it seems to be that the Orange was bred, not born.
Here in the Americas, it is the Spaniards who are chiefly responsible for the fruit’s prominence. Scurvy wasn’t precisely understood then, but it was understood that the fruit staved it off. The Spaniards thus carried seeds, or saplings, on all their ships to plant in the far-off lands they discovered. It is speculated that Columbus planted the fruit on Hispaniola on his second voyage there. Oranges were planted in Florida in 1565, again by the Spaniards. And in this small event, a titan would be born. Florida Oranges dominated the market in the United States and abroad for decades, mostly thanks to G.I.s coming home expecting the fruit they had been supplied with. Florida Orange Juice was a staple of the 1950s white picket fence life. But in recent years this has fallen off considerably. Most Orange Juice sold in your local supermarket comes not from Florida, but from Brazil. What happened?
Wind the clock back to 2005. George W. Bush is still president, thanks in no small part to the WASP lawyers who descended on the State of Florida to ensure the hanging chads fell his way. The Iraq War is going poorly. And Florida names the Orange its official fruit, albeit somewhat belatedly. The previous year, Florida had recorded a crop of 21 million pounds of oranges. A mere two decades later, that has fallen to 3.6 million, a mere 17% of the 2003–04 season. The size of Florida’s orange fields has fallen by over 40%. What has been the culprit? A tiny bug, called psyllids, carrying Huanglongbing, a Chinese bacterial disease otherwise known as “citrus greening.” In 2005, the disease was discovered in West Palm Beach. Florida growers were familiar with the disease, but in the wake of surviving hurricanes and frosts, there was a certain resilience to the remaining planters. They had no idea the damage this disease would inflict. This disease has been compared by both experts and amateurs to AIDS. Pretty much every grove in Florida is compromised. While Brazilian groves also deal with this problem, their overwhelming insecticide use puts them on a different field. And therein lies the rub.
Classical GOP apologia would say, “Who cares? If Brazil can make it cheaper, then consumers should have the right to buy the cheap Brazilian Oranges instead of the Florida ones!” We are indeed fortunate that this orthodoxy has fractured, though many still employ it. If the Florida Orange Groves are allowed to die for the sake of efficiency, we will not only lose one of the foremost concrete exports the State can boast, but the land will be converted from groves and trees to apartments and supercenters. This is a case that highlights why protectionism is actually of enormous benefit to us. Brazil is not only a foreign power whose interests have often not aligned with our own, but their agricultural practices are horrific to behold. Brazil uses more pesticide than the United States and China — two of the worst offenders and also two similarly very large countries — combined. Brazil accounts for 18% of the entire pesticide market. These pesticides do not come off in washing, but remain in the skin and seep into the fruit.
I love oranges, and orange juice. Yes, I would love to see Florida’s orange industry survive and my own children, who will be fifth-generation Floridians, be able to brag that their home is the source of this “ruddy living gold.” But this is less about the oranges themselves. This is about whether you and I are willing to fight to preserve our way of life, willing to fight to preserve a very specific specimen. Because it goes far beyond oranges.
The reason protectionism is employed by a polity is simple: the nominal price savings of foreign imports are not worth the loss of control over production. While America’s agricultural practices are far from perfect, they are a significant improvement over those of the Third World. Globalization has led to the slow poisoning of both food and land, under that same promise of consumer savings. And where environmental concerns are raised, corporations respond not with a clean product but an entirely synthetic one. Florida has banned fake meat — an excellent move, but still largely defensive. Florida has a surprisingly large cattle industry, but this too has serious ecological issues and remains under the Sword of Damocles that is land development.
Florida Oranges, American meat, it all flows into the same truth: we Americans cannot accept substitutes, and we demand excellence. An almost foundational lie of our enemies is that you must accept the substitute, you must accept the poison. You do not. We know that it costs more to say no. Every supply chain you can shorten gives you a small measure more control over what actually goes into your body, the importance of which cannot be overstated. Not everyone needs to homestead, not everyone needs a garden, but you should at least know someone who does. Not everyone needs to get into the weeds of nutrition and agricultural practices, but you should know someone who does. You are being poisoned, and every degree you can obtain the means to prevent that will pay dividends to both your health and the quality of your patrimony.
There is hope for the Florida Orange. In the last few years, the Davidson Tree has been discovered, which has built an immune response to Huanglongbing such that it can catch the disease but continue to produce healthy fruit. This perhaps is another lesson for us, that in the ashes can be bred a specimen resistant to the modern contagions. This fruit, like us, colonized this place and made a veritable paradise of it. Like us, oranges now find themselves under vicious assault, and some question whether they will endure on this continent.
Like us, they shall endure and prevail.
Long live the Florida orange!
Right now, I live in California, which has a history with oranges and other citrus fruits nearly as storied as Florida's. It's still the #2 producer, and local fruit is pretty easy to find. But they're often mixed in with cheaper fruit from other states, produced to less stringent standards...
I must ask the author - to what degree does this argument apply within the US, and between the states themselves? (This whole essay outlines an entirely reasonable principle when considering two nations, but the unique federal structure of the US provides some challenges.) There are plenty of cases where one state can undercut another, to the harm of both consumers and the victim state's economy. It's reasonable for each state to look after itself and its own residents first. But do 50 competing regulatory regimes a strong nation make? Should the federal government be fixing this mess? Etc. etc.