Jay Clark travels to the ends of the earth to find a solution to citrus greening, a bacterial disease that's the top threat to Florida citrus. This time he flew to Brazil.

A Wauchula citrus grower and rancher, Clark is president of Lakeland-based Florida Citrus Mutual, the state's largest growers' representative. Citrus Mutual sponsored the Brazil trip, which included 14 other growers and Steve Futch, an extension agent at the Citrus Research and Education Center in Lake Alfred.

Greening is a fatal bacterial disease most commonly spread by the Asian citrus psyllid, a small insect common in Florida. It was discovered here in August 2005 near Homestead. Since then, the disease has been confirmed in 18 South Florida counties, including 81 commercial groves The disease has not yet turned up in Polk County despite confirmed cases in neighboring Highlands, Manatee, Hillsborough and Okeechobee counties. Brazil is the world's largest orange grower and orange juice producer. The growers left for Brazil on April 21, and Clark briefed The Ledger three days after their return.

Q. What did you hope to learn from the Brazilian trip?
A. What I hoped it would give was the overall big picture. We hear a lot about what's going on in Brazil about production, about diseases and so. I just wanted to get a first-hand look at it - what they are producing in the way of citrus, what the potential is for citrus, are diseases as detrimental to them as they are for us? Also, they've got some new diseases that we don't have, and I wanted to see what those might be doing to them - something we might be doing in the future.

Q. Was there anything you learned that could be adapted immediately to Florida citrus?
A. I think there is because they're ahead of us as far as dealing with greening particularly. The big thing, I think, is when you see the impact of greening on groves that are already dead, destroyed and planted in sugar cane. I guess it just brings it home a little closer to what we need to be doing here and what we're going to have to do to survive. I don't think there's anything new there, but there's a lot of things they're doing that our growers are not doing.

We still have a lot of growers that are not scouting - looking for greening. We haven't found it in Polk County, and some believe the reason we haven't found it in Polk County is that we haven't looked hard enough for it. They're taking a lot more serious approach. They get out and do their scouting and try to find the disease. Their psyllid control is a lot (better) because they're taking it more seriously. We saw very few psyllids. Their population is way down in psyllids in their orange groves.

Q. Was there anything that seemed to work for the Brazilians but would not be practical here in Florida either because of climate, labor availability or other differences?
A. They're using basically the same chemicals (pesticides) we are. One advantage they have - we can (use) temek (the best pesticide against psyllids) only in the spring and only at a 33-pound rate per application (per acre). They can use temek year around with no limits on the application. They can also put temek on their resets (citrus saplings) by hand, which legally we cannot do here.

They're plan on greening control is basically what ours will eventually wash out to be. I don't think there's any differences there. With the scouting, naturally they've got cheaper labor, so they (can) train more people to do that. That will cost them less money than what it will cost us.

They've got the same problems we do. They've got growers who are not compliant. They've got abandoned groves where people aren't doing anything. They have a law that says, when a greening tree is found, they're supposed to push it out in 15 days, but they're not enforcing the law and growers aren't doing it. It frustrates the growers who are doing it. It causes more problems. We'll have the same situation here. You always have your growers who comply and do the best they can. At the other end of the scale are growers who do nothing.

Q. Did anything surprise you?
A. Can we use the word "shock" instead of surprise. For one thing, we've heard about the acreage decrease in Brazil. Not true. There's a lot of acreage that's going out - that's going into sugar cane - but at the same time they're moving (citrus groves) somewhere else in areas of Sao Paulo state (the main citrus area) that might not have canker or greening. Their nurseries have capacity for 20 million trees a year. Those nurseries aren't growing 20 million trees if they don't anticipate 20 million trees being planted. So that was kind of a shock.

The other shock was we went to one of Cutrale's plants, which was not their largest plant. (Sucocitrico Cutrale Ltd. is Brazil's largest juice processor. It also owns plants in Auburndale and Leesburg.) It had nine tanks that will hold 1.8 million gallons of NFC (not-from-concentrate orange juice). At the port, they had nine tanks that will hold 1.8 million gallons. They were doing construction right next to this. I asked the man who was showing us around, "What are you building here?" He said they're putting 12 more tanks at the plant and 12 more tanks at the port, each one will hold 1.8 million gallons of NFC. We know they're gearing up to sell a lot more NFC.

I think the U.S. market is going to be the target for a lot of that NFC. They can haul six million gallons in one of those ships.

(Note: Brazil currently ships mostly frozen concentrated OJ, which can be reconstituted to a ready-to-pour juice at U.S. plants. But sales of frozen concentrate and reconstituted juices have been falling for several years in the U.S. market, while the more expensive and profitable NFC juices are the only OJ products showing sales growth. As the major domestic supplier of NFC orange juice, Florida owns that market currently.)

Q. It's been said that no commercial citrus industry in other countries has survived greening. Did you see anything in Brazil that made you believe that country or Florida would change that?
A. They found greening 13 months before we found it here. Most people there absolutely believe they're going to survive if they take the precautions and the management practices.

At one of the large farms that we were on, the managers were kind of delighted when they heard another grower had greening because they think there's going to be some survivors. The ones that manage it, the ones that do the best job, will survive. The ones that don't manage will not survive. If I'm the survivor, I got a better market; I'm more profitable. They're absolutely convinced they're going to survive.

We're going to survive here in Florida. I think absolutely we can if our growers decide this is a serious issue. If we stick our head in the sand and we don't do anything, we're toast.