Opinion: Here’s To A Worthy Citrus Industry Warrior
June 1, 2010 It sure doesn’t seem like a whole year has gone by since I was honored with the Florida Grower Citrus Achievement Award. A lot has happened since then.
At my paying job with Evans Properties Inc., I was transferred to agricultural research and business development manager. My duties include continuing industry service for HLB research, internal citrus research, and searching for alternative crops to plant on citrus acres left fallow by tristeza, canker, Swingle decline, Frances, Ivan, Jeanne, Wilma, Fay, and now HLB. A daunting task, yet I believe we will find a mix of feasible, though not lucrative, alternative crops.
My crystal ball shows many areas of Florida suffering catastrophic tree losses. Areas that truly implement area-wide psyllid/HLB management effectively will be productive, maintaining a reduced, yet viable industry infrastructure. Outside of those successfully managed areas, we will only be able to replant citrus after the HLB firestorm reduces Liberibacter inocula to nil via total host annihilation.
While we’re at the job of finding solutions to HLB, our other industry institutions might as well just go ahead and achieve retail market commitment to citrus crop price stabilization at profitable levels. And that’s all there is to it.
I am very pleased to offer warm and hearty congratulations to the 2010 Florida Grower Citrus Achievement Award winner, Jerry Newlin. Despite having a huge “day job” running a massive citrus and farming operation at Orange-Co, Jerry has served for many years on numerous community and industry boards providing leadership, tenacity, focus, and moral suasion to complex decision making processes. These are traits Jerry utilized in the battle to organize a credible effort to fight HLB. Our initial collective response to HLB was pitiful. We were the Polish Cavalry fighting Panzer tanks; our regulatory, research, and industry institutions at all levels as proud and prepared as the French army behind the Maginot line, and as effective.
Then along came Newlin. Arriving from the heartland riding a white pickup, Jerry commandeered the chair of the Florida Citrus Industry Research Coordinating Council Greening Task Force and rallied reluctant researchers, demanded indispensable dollars, ran rough-shod over recalcitrants, blasted barricades of bureaucracy, and remained respected by all parties. Jerry is a major reason we have such an outstanding research and development program today, providing some hope we can snatch victory from the jaws of defeat!
At Orange-Co, Jerry has initiated many aggressive and bold measures to save its trees. He was a leader in getting FDACS and IR-4 help with pesticide label changes to allow low-volume spraying in order to reduce psyllid control costs for not only Orange-Co, but also the rest of the industry. Orange-Co has been successful at maintaining HLB infection rates at very low levels, even while planting hundreds of thousands of resets, proving that effective implementation of current control strategies on an area-wide basis works. Orange-Co stands ready to remain productive through the rough years ahead.
Jerry Newlin is a great leader, a great mentor, and a great soldier for the Florida citrus industry. He also has been a great friend to me. Now, let us hail Jerry Newlin as the very finest of citrus growers and a deserving recipient of the 2010 Florida Grower Citrus Achievement Award.
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