We’re a group of friends in the Florida citrus business, and friends of Florida citrus growers and who have watched their groves wither away under the deadly HLB bacteria known as citrus greening.
For years we’ve put our faith in the Citrus Research and Development Foundation (CRDF), set up a decade ago for the purpose of finding a way to save Florida’s citrus crops from HLB.
We and our friends became suspicious of CRDF long ago when it started to lose its way from a group of smart people devoted to finding solutions, and became more of a permanent club of insiders to rake in money from businesses and taxpayers and feather their own little academic nest.
Over time we all came to the view that CRDF was just another political scam to rip off the working people.
The more we talked to our own networks of friends, the more we realized that we weren’t alone.
We didn’t know what to do until the South Florida Sun-Sentinel ran an op-ed about the problem in March, 2020.
That’s when we knew we weren’t alone.
Working from our homes during the coronavirus pandemic with one of us under voluntary self-quarantine, we put our thoughts together and started this website and a social media campaign. Because some of us are tied to sources near CRDF and elsewhere in the industry, we’re using pen names for now.
So here we are, starting with a Twitter account @savecitrustrees and a new Facebook page (@savecitrustrees) to tell our story, network people together, and save Florida citrus. Not just Florida citrus, but citrus farms all across America.
