BARTOW, Fla. (AP) - Polk County has ended its streak as Florida's top citrus-producing county, a position it's held for much of the past seven decades.
The Lakeland Ledger reports (http://bit.ly/2cCAosP) Polk growers produced just 12.5 million boxes of citrus in the 2015-16 season. That ranked third behind 14.3 million boxes produced in Hendry County and 12.8 million boxes harvested in DeSoto County last season.
Statewide, Florida growers produced 94.2 million boxes of oranges, grapefruit, tangerines and tangelos in 2015-16, down 16.5 percent from almost 112.8 million boxes in the previous season.
Florida citrus production began declining shortly after the arrival of the fatal bacterial disease citrus greening in 2005 in Miami-Dade County. The state's commercial citrus growers produced 291.8 million boxes in 2003-04, or three times the 2015-16 harvest.
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