In Florida, federal and state officials have quarantined 85 square miles of farmland to combat a destructive pest: the Oriental fruit fly, which attacks hundreds of varieties of fruits and vegetables.
The invasive insect was first detected near Miami a few weeks ago. Since then, authorities have banned the transport of most fruits and vegetables from one of the nation's most productive agricultural areas. It's called the Redland, a part of Miami-Dade County named for its pockets of red clay. With its tropical climate and year-round growing season, growers there produce everything from tomatoes to papayas.
But at J&C Tropicals, a grower and distributor in the heart of the Redland, things are disturbingly quiet. Operations manager Salvador Fernandez walks into one of his six cavernous coolers. With the quarantine, it's empty.
"It's usually full," he says, "especially at this time of year, because we do truckloads of mamey and avocado and passion fruit and dragon fruit."
Tropical fruit sales have been growing in recent years, with new varieties available to consumers. Dragon fruit is originally from Asia. Mamey — sometimes called mamey sapote — is from Central America.
Two weeks ago, agriculture officials froze production in much of the Redland farming area after they detected the Oriental fruit fly. The quarantine was imposed just as growers were beginning to harvest tropical fruit crops. Fernandez can't say how much it's all likely to cost. "We estimated that we have mamey alone about 500,000 pounds left on the trees," he says. "[As for] dragon fruit, that leaves 20 million pounds on the trees potentially."
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