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Twilight Greenaway

writer & editor
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Saving America’s Citrus: Can it be Done Without GMOs?

Ben McLean is oddly optimistic for someone fighting, daily, to save his company. The Florida farmer and vice president of Uncle Matt’s Organic says he has seen the fruit on around a third of his citrus trees turn green, hard, and inedible.

McLean’s losses mirror the rest of the state’s citrus industry, which has lost an estimated $4.5 billion to “huanglongbing” (HLB) or Citrus Greening Disease. But as an organic farmer, he can’t spray synthetic pesticides to kill the tiny, scaly insects called the Asian citrus psyllids, known for transmitting Candidatus Liberibacter, the pathogen that causes the disease. In the last year, he has had to approach the problem with a lot of creativity and perseverance. But McLean doesn’t think he’s any worse off than his conventional counterparts.

Much of the coverage of Citrus Greening Disease–including this widely discussed New York Times article from July 2013–has pointed to early trials of a genetically engineered (GE) orange tree bred to be resistant to HLB as the only real solution. But McLean isn’t so sure.

Read more.

 

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PostedOctober 20, 2014
AuthorTwilight Greenaway

For humans to have a responsible relationship to the world, they must imagine their places in it. To have a place, to live and belong in a place, to live from a place without destroying it, we must imagine it. By imagination we see it illuminated by its own unique character and by our love for it. By imagination we recognize with sympathy the fellow members, human and nonhuman, with whom we share our place. 

- Wendell Berry