The majority of Florida’s congressional delegation is backing a bill that would set aside $150 million over five years to combat a bacterial disease that for nearly a decade has threatened to cripple Florida’s $9 billion-a-year citrus industry.
The legislation announced Wednesday by U.S. Rep. Vern Buchanan, R-Florida, would set up a trust funded through existing tariffs on citrus imports to research citrus greening, which the University of Florida’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences says has cost the Sunshine States economy an estimated $3.63 billion in lost revenues and 6,611 jobs since 2006.
