BARTOW – White bucket in hand, Sean Harper walks down a row of peach trees, thinning out immature fruit a few weeks ahead of harvest. Just four years ago, this land was covered in a citrus grove. But on this sunny mid-morning, not one orange tree remains.
"I just got tired of dealing with the freezing and the greening and the canker," he said, plucking a small peach from a tree.
Like many Florida citrus farmers, the uncertainty caused by the citrus diseases and previous freezes caused him to turn to peach farming.
"We had a cold snap for one or two days and we lost about 60 percent of our fruit," the owner of SunSweet Peaches said. "We didn't want to plant it again. It was still too risky."
He estimated that his citrus losses from the freeze could add up to nearly $200,000.
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