5 Surprising Ways America's Foods Are Farmed | Big Business Marathon | Insider Business

From farmers protecting the world's bananas from a deadly fungus to the company processing millions of limes using orange trees, we travel the world to learn about the innovative

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farmers keep our food species alive. Our first stop is Mexico, where a mcal-producing family grows their agave. from seeds to protect against diseases, while mcal and tequila are made from agave plants. mcal actually predates tequila and has a distinctive smoky flavor. mcal gets its name from the Aztec word macali which means oven-roasted agave, but it gets the nickname Elixir of the Gods because as legend has it in pre-Columbian Mexico, lightning struck the agave plant creating mascull for most of From the history of Mull, it was a drink of the lower class.

The G family has made mcal in the town of Santa Katarina Minas since 1898, but unlike their ancestors, they grow their Agave or M, as it is known locally from seeds, while other companies may prefer cutting the roots for make faster the process. Use this slower method so the Agave can better resist disease. After between 7 and 35 years, the Agave is ready to be harvested. All by hand, first they remove the leaves and then cut the thorns at the tip inside each leaf because if those thorns accidentally get under your skin, Graci's brother says they can migrate, which hurts the opponents a lot, the Chemicals excreted by G leaves can also be dangerous. but Edgar says that the opponents do not bother him.

What remains is the agave heart called p and it takes a great effort to dig it up. The weights can weigh hundreds of pounds, so workers break them down to make them easier to carry and then transport. on the bed of a waiting truck, but it is still weeks away from becoming mcal. Remember the Earth and the oven, while the agave hearts have to be cooked first, building the oven is an art form passed down to Generations workers. Place stones on top of the firewood that the rocks are exposed to. a 2000 Dee fire for up to 9 hours to get red hot, they load the agave hearts on top, first the big ones and then the small ones, kick and push each paa into place, then shovel more fiber waste on top and then two men throw a canvas over everything and finally a layer of earth finishes the oven, trapping the heat inside a cross that is placed on top to bless the lot.

What's inside the oven slowly burns giving the mcal its distinctive smoky flavor for the next step, we head to another distillery. called mes one hour east in San Bazar guava here dongyo has been making mcal for 40 years today his

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produces 6,000 lers a year he and his team move the cooked agave hearts to this mill or grinder to crush the agave a horse pulls The stone weighs a whopping 1,000 pounds. The Dango team uses forks to move the shredded fibers to the fermentation tanks back to the graas. They add water to dissolve the sugar. The natural yeast goes to work eating the sugar and converting it into alcohol later.

After it ferments for almost a week Edgar comes in to check it, first listening to make sure there is no sound of CO2 bubbles escaping from the vat, which might sound something like this, then submerging his test tube when it is ready to be distilled, the workers rake the fibers into the stills and add more water from each barrel they obtain around 100 L of mezcal the distillation area is known as pelan since the agave fibers heat the alcohol the steam rises travels through From this tube it condenses and falls into a waiting jar. They will distill it for a second time to obtain four jars.

The first is called the head and its alcohol content is very high. The next jar is known as the body and has a little less alcohol. The third It's the cola with even less and finally the last jug is an acidic residue called andishe she used to clean the floors Gella's team fills 8,000 bottles a year She sells her brand Ra Minetto in Mexico and exports to the United States and Europe, but it wasn't until the 2010s mcal began to see interest outside of Waka; appeared in test bars in the United States and beyond. In response, Mexico's mole production increased 400% in the six years to 2020.

By then, the United States overtook Mexico as the largest market for mcol. Once the poor man's drink had achieved worldwide fame to standardize and regulate the growing Mexican industry. The government got involved and it started in 1994 when the government established a name for mcal, kind of like how champagne can only come from a specific region of France. It was to protect the traditional mcol making process and the place where it is made. In 1997, the government appointed an organization now called comcom to oversee and enforce certification rules as mcal had to be made from 100% agave only in these nine states and had to have a certain amount of alcohol by volume and methanol.

It seems like a great idea. to guarantee quality standards throughout Mexico and key production within the country and at the beginning even local producers advocated for it those new regulations eventually came with a problem today to obtain certification the producers now have to have time and a lot of money the Mexican lawyer Blanca Salvador says certification can cost between $375 and $2,500, which is a lot for a small Mescal letto like Don Goyo and the cost doesn't stop there, producers have to pay to have their mezcal lab tested and buy all the equipment required and the entire certification process can take years going through comcom was the only way to obtain a certification in 2020 corruption allegations came to light and the Mexican government found the organization almost $50,000 for deceptive and abusive practices such as prioritizing big companies thoughtful about small ones, but now producers fear the rules of do are putting traditions at risk because it is really difficult to obtain a constant alcohol and methanol content in traditional distillation, so some large-scale producers have resorted to more modern equipment such as steel stills to guarantee the alcohol and methanol.

Another concern is changing the naming standards for Agave even though generations of indigenous groups used native words for the plant, when Comam told Graciella to drop the ancestral name of quiche on their labels for Mexican, it was their last straw, So in 2021 she and her family decided to stop certifying their brand even though their distillation process did not change by choosing family tradition instead of regulation. Gella labeled all distilled agave and other distilleries followed her lead, but there's another problem: All that demand has attracted the interest of international companies and created more competition on top of an already difficult certification process for these popular brands. are Mexican owned, a French company owns Delmag, a British company owns Casamigos and a New York-based company finances The Silence McAl, even celebrities like George Clooney, Adam Lavine and the stars of Breaking Bad have gotten in on the market thanks to the protection of the do.

American companies can't make mcol in the United States, but they are allowed to buy large quantities for Mexican producers to repackage and resell for much more than they paid. This system has left traditional growers, even certified ones like Dong Goyo, with a shrinking share of the flower. Global industry that is why it sells its mcal in plastic bottles without labels to a middleman Dongo earns between $15 and $40 per bottle Kasa Cortez, one of the brands that eventually buys D goo's mcal, resells it between $38 and $100 a bottle but these ancestral Mescal They haven't given it today the government has added more certifying agencies to lighten the burden on comcom but Blanca believes more should be done to help producers bottle their own mcol and streamline the certification process by graciella she believes That the key is to respect the agave.

The plant itself mcos also hopes to continue putting tradition first, a tradition that you can see here before taking a sip from a new bottle. Dango pours a little, thanking the earth for its ancient gift of Mescal. We then visited a farm in Colombia to learn how it is protected. the world's bananas from a deadly fungus the most popular banana in the world may be on the verge of extinction similar to humans bananas also face a pandemic 99% of bananas exported to developed countries are just a group called The Cavendish and the Cavendish is vulnerable to Tropical race 4 or Panama disease, the fungus that is now ravaging banana farms around the world, so now you can compare that it is a tropical race, since having this banana, the plant looks very healthy.

A scientist recently developed a line of Cavendish that is resistant to TR4, but it was genetically modified in Europe, MSG is under regulation so we can't use it, so scientists like Fernando had to start from scratch to find a solution and They are working against the clock because if TR4 is not stopped it would kill off the taxi and it is already happening globally, we are facing the collapse of a 25 billion Cavendish industry, so how did we get here? Can we save one of the most consumed fruits in the world before it's too late? You probably know the Cavendish banana.

You can find this type of banana in all supermarkets. All over the world they are very popular because they are delicious, look pretty and ripen as they are transported. It's high yielding, so it has a pretty thick skin, travels well, and tastes pretty good. It comes in its own package, but there is a problem. They are sterile, they do not have seeds. Seedless means that Cavendish bananas are clones of each other, so the only way to propagate them is in vitro or by taking new growth called suckers from the base of an older plant, but like all of them they are genetic copies.

Cavendish are really vulnerable to disease, the domino effect, if you have everything wrong with just one clone, one disease can kill everything, plant by plant, that is exactly what is happening with TR4, one of the deadliest plant diseases that exist. The fungus does not spread to humans, but eventually kills the banana plant, so no more fruit grows. Scientists surmise that the fungus probably started somewhere in Southeast Asia in the 1990s and spread rapidly around the world; Then, in 2019, it affected Latin America combined with the Caribbean, 75% of the world's production is grown in that area. bananas to ensure that the fungus does not spread.

Farms throughout Colombia have implemented biosecurity measures. Evanor 2 was one of the first farms in the country to detect TR4. Workers wash and disinfect the undersides of any incoming cars in case there is infected soil. Hiding in the tracks, Antonio's team built cement paths throughout the farm so that, on their way to harvest, the workers do not walk on open ground. Once they have reached the area ready to be harvested, the workers walk through a disinfectant foot bath made of ammonium outside. Field workers measure banana fingers to make sure they are ready to harvest. They are generally ready 12 to 13 weeks after the fruit stem appears.

One worker cuts a 65-pound package of bu while the other catches it and takes it to the By cable, that cable system takes all those bunches of bananas to the packing plant. First, workers disinfect the bunches with chlorine, then check the quality of the bananas and any signs of fair damage, cut them down, and throw the bushes into a huge tank that the bath not only preserves. bananas but removes the latex that naturally occurs in the peel bananas are cut into smaller bunches of five to seven then. Come. Those famous workers with stickers wrap the banana carefully so as not to bruise it.

That wrapper has holes so that the bananas can ripen as they travel no more than 4 hours after the bananas are harvested. Those boxes end up on pallets floated on trucks. The bananas are transported by truck to the nearby port where they are transferred to ships. shipment heads to the US with the team's bananas and people moving along this Global Supply Chain, it's easy to see how the fungus could spread if TR4 sneaks onto a farm. The Colombian government has established strict guidelines to contain the fungus, meaning they found symptoms such as yellowing of the leaves. Once level 4 is identified on a plant you cannot simply kill that plant, the fungus penetrates 10 to 10 feet deep into the soil, once the pathogen is in the soil it is almost impossible to eradicate, so you have to kill all the plants. that area to continue operating the rest of the farm Evan Norte 2 Follow the government's three-zone plan, the injected herbicide kills all the plants in zone a, which is covered with tarps so that birds do not approach the fungus and spread it , alsoThere are channels around the zone to keep water away from the infected area in zone B called the buffer zone, finally in zone C the plants are allowed to grow but are constantly monitored for signs of TR4 José estimates that biosecurity has cost him to this farm up to $5 million since 2019, so they are expensive, but the measures are working to keep the fungus at bay.

These biosecurity measures have contained the fungus in Colombia and prevented it from spreading to Ecuador, the world's largest banana exporter, but the fungus can wipe out an entire variety of fruit. If it doesn't stop, we know because it happened before, in the early 1900s, a banana called Gross Michelle was the most popular, but in the 1950s a strain of Panama disease wiped out all Gross Mishell production. Fortunately, Cavendish was resistant to that first strain, so it took over as the banana of choice, the problem was that banana companies built their entire supply chains around this Cavendish variety.

In 2019 they exported 20 million bananas and supported millions of jobs around the world, but now the Cavendish is also vulnerable. History repeats itself now with the tropical banana. The race for and Cav cooking bananas, like bananas, also run the risk of contracting TR4, a food safety risk because bananas are a staple food in Latin America, Africa and many other countries, they are part of our diet daily, so yes, the newest breed of Ferium is Scary for both Cavendish and bananas, but this time we have advanced scientific researchers from around the world who are working towards one goal: this guy invented a banana that made just that in 2019.

Dr. James Dale announced that his team had successfully injected the DNA of a resistant banana into a firebox and it worked, we found the solution, we have a line of Cavendish that appears to be completely resistant to TR4. What we haven't done yet is a taste test and that's because the GMOs that look like they smell feel exactly the same as any other banana. We only changed one jean but no one wanted to buy it. This miracle banana because it was genetically modified in the EU, most member countries have totally or partially banned GMOs, in the USA they are allowed, but it is feared that an argument against GMOs is that these modified plants They would quickly spread their genes and wipe out biodiversity, but with bananas, that's not a problem, jeans don't move because they're sterile, you can grow a GMO banana next to a non-Jam banana for 50 years and the Jee won't grow. will move from one to the other incredibly frustrating, there is the solution, but it is a scientific solution, but not a political solution, so the scientists had to go back to the drawing board using what they learned from James to play the game of the non-transgenic.

Fernando is a breeder for key genene, a genetics company in the Netherlands, and believes that the best way to circumvent GMO regulations is through traditional cultivation, which means taking two different types of bananas, the Cavendish and one that is resistant, and essentially you have the couple and their child, hopefully, is resistant to Panama disease, but still tastes good, like the Cavendish cross or the traditional cross. something that happens every day in nature so the bees are pollinating the different flowers with other flowers so that's what we are doing here we are acting like bees Fernando has found some resistant bananas to cross with Cavendish but most of them are not even They are edible bananas they are the bananas that are full of seeds like these and crossing them with a Cavendish is difficult they are sterile very difficult to breathe it is not impossible so you can try to cross that you need to do it many, many many times to get only one James had few seats to produce that first transgenic banana.

It took him almost 10 years since our first field TR. For those future bananas that are traditionally grown, it will take the same time, it will take many years because the life cycle of the banana is quite slow, but the longer it takes to traditionally breed a resistant Cavendish, the more the disease spreads and the more ferium strains could get free. Fernandoo says there is a broader way to attack this problem: diversity take tomatoes, for example, you go to the supermarket and there may be 10 or more different types of Cherry Vine beef Roma tomatoes, that is diversity, so if a tomato is If you get into trouble it won't be a big loss.

Fernando and his colleagues have the same vision for bananas: we have prohibited red bananas, pink bananas, why not? try to incorporate that into the market so that you can go to the supermarket and have a whole bank of different banana options that you can choose from. There are hundreds of different varieties of bananas around the world. A friend of mine collected one at the same time as him. He said that if you didn't know, you think you would eat a strawberry, yes, the diversity and

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ly different flavors would also help the farms, but if you have different types of bananas grown together, one banana will probably be more resistant than the next, so So you can stop the spread of the disease to the next plant, so why haven't companies diversified?

Because it is too expensive and complicated to change a $25 billion industry built around a monoculture, so until a solution is found these biosecurity measures will have to be short term. Long term solution to keep the big banana

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alive in Mexico, we learned how farmers use orange seeds to grow and harvest millions of limes. Around 45 lime producers are spread across Martínez de Tor Vera Cruz. They grow Persian limes, the seedless kind that Persian limes love. The climate is humid here, but in recent years the area has faced increasingly extreme weather, so how can they grow strong enough lime trees even without seeds?

Believe it or not, they start with orange seeds, take a ripe orange broth and a lime sprout. plant and use a grafting technique to combine them as they grow, the workers cut off the non-lime leaves, basically convincing this orange plant that it is lime, an orange root like this is more abundant, so when is mature, the fused lime plant will keep better. to disease and climate change after about a year, but the hard work doesn't end there in 2014. Farms across Mexico saw a huge drop in production due to a plant-killing disease called hlb or Citrus Greening, the Insects transmit a type of bacteria that dies of starvation.

Nutrient trees cause them to produce less fruit, so how did they continue to produce millions of limes with these insects in the loose pits? Teams here discovered they could control hlb and a disease called woodbag using mesh nets and insecticides. It takes about four years for the tree to bear fruit. A tree can produce about 150 pounds of limes per year. This picker has been harvesting here for 2 years like him. Almost everyone who works on the farm is from the state, but in the In the last 5 years the limes have not al

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looked like this. This means that Cruz farmers have faced an increasing number of floods, frosts and strong winds in very dry conditions.

The skin of the lime is too soft and can turn yellow if conditions are too humid. The tree will drown and the shell of the fruits will split when it is very windy. The fruit this extreme weather was part of what caused a lime shortage that began in 2021, causing prices to rise 300% by January 2022, but Veta Cruz has been spared the worst of these changing weather patterns. Farmers here hope that the grafts will sustain their trees if that time comes in the fields, workers pluck the ripe limes and place them in these traditional aate bags woven from agave leaves.

Workers can harvest about 22,000 limes a day. They load them onto trucks that head to the packaging facilities. This machine sheds the files upon processing. line, each one is washed with a disinfectant detergent and sprayed with a palm wax spray. It's not just to make the files look shiny during their journey in the factory, the files will be sorted several times. Some stations do it by hand, others with sophisticated technology. those photos the machine separated them according to their size those that are not the correct size will go directly to the juice industry in Mexico those of perfect size will be exported but first there is quality control after passing this final test the limes are ready for packaging and shipping, most of the limes produced in this region end up in the United States.

Demand for limes has increased for decades as Latin American and Asian cuisines became more popular, but in 1994, after a new Free Trade Agreement went into effect, the floodgates for Mexican limes were now the United States' largest. importer of limes worldwide and has doubled the amount it bought from Mexico in the last 10 years to meet demand. Mexico increased its production by 50% in the same decade. Workers here say the lawsuit is a double EDG. sword on one side, but the disadvantage of extreme weather is making it difficult to maintain the farm, they can also lean on that grafting technique to help the trees grow faster so they can keep up with the growing interest from us, but As they wait for what might come, they continue picking in the hope of stable weather and a strong harvest.

Then we go to Florida, where farmers have figured out how to continue growing edible oranges while fighting a disease called Citrus Greening in 2021. Florida had its worst orange crops since World War II, that's because of this insect. is waging a war on the state's valuable citrus trees, so this tree is infected with Citrus Greening. Produces small mapen fruits. See the difference. This disease can kill trees. The insect spreads a disease called hlb or Citrus Greening. It infects almost all citrus trees. Grove in the state less canopy can be seen there is simply less foliage on the tree you can see through the tree the oranges are still edible the real problem is that Citrus Greening has cut Florida production by 78% it has cost the state almost 8 billion and has boosted For many producers outside the industry, they should remember 15 years ago, to what this place was once a collection of varieties, it was full of beautiful green trees, we have had frosts, hurricanes, but Citrus Greening has definitely been the most challenging topic. what we face in my career this group of scientists is racing to find a cure armed with some unique weapons this is about the size we are going to put on most new trees now researchers have helped growers grow oranges on trees infected but we have not yet found a long-term solution.

We will have to live with infected trees and make the most of them in order to keep this disease at bay before it wipes out the state's orange industry. We head to Florida to discover Larry's illness. A fifth generation farmer in Fort Me Florida, we have been growing citrus in my family since the 1850s when I started in the industry. Citrus trees occupied more than 900,000 acres in the state of Florida; In fact, some years we had too much fruit and market prices were depressed. Just 15 years ago your family packed a million boxes of oranges a year, mostly Valencia oranges, the big, sweet, juicy kind, you planted a grove hoping that will last several generations.

The first case of citrus staging was reported in China back in 1919 and quickly spread throughout the country. The continent is also devastating citrus groves in India and Saudi Arabia. No one knows exactly how Asian citrus CID got to Florida, but in 1998 it appeared on an orange jasmine plant in a backyard in Palm Beach County and quickly spread throughout the state. on infected rootstocks, but it would be another 7 years before the Florida orange tree showed signs of greening. It spreads throughout the state before you know it is present and in 2005, Larry found the first tree infected with it.

It was a real challenge and a revelation for us. We knew the threat it could pose to our operation and feared there were more infected trees that simply had not been detected at first. Larry tried to remove all the diseased trees, but the insect moved faster and soon infected too many to control when a CID chews through them. In a citrus tree it leaves behind the bacteria that cause greening here in the vascular tissue the bacteria replicate and block this important highway for moving nutrients underground the root systems thin and die on the surface the yellow pattern is noticeable, the staindark green, if you can Look at me through the canopy of this tree, that means this tree is actually very sick, while the trees continue to produce oranges for a few years, the fruit essentially never ripens.

You see it is small in size, it stays green and when I cut this fruit, you see a strange shape you can still eat the fruit, it's just not as sweet the orange juice of this fruit has lower sugar or brick content than normal fruit, but there's nothing wrong with the juice, it's horrible and 40% of those oranges fall off the tree before As usual, the bacteria actually starves and kills the tree over time. Today, researchers estimate that 90% of all orange trees in the state have the bacteria. There are no longer abundant citrus trees in the landscape.

Larry has kept his trees alive and producing for 15 years using a combination of horticultural techniques developed by scientists at the University of Florida, part of our work being carried out right now is finding ways to keep trees that have the disease still producing fruits that are usable. You guys want to see what some pids look like. Like, okay, so they're really small, oh, there's a runaway, they're actually small, they jump around a little bit, so we use this thing called a vacuum cleaner or the funniest term we use with kids is pter we just stink. above, it's basically a little vacuum cleaner in my hand here Deep Lauren and Brock can study Sid's movement to learn what might keep them away from a citrus treat.

Using the vacuum cleaner is actually a very efficient way to collect cid. He has discovered some things that detract from value. Cids first, this pink clay is sprayed on trees to hide the leaves from the insect using wavelengths of light to see a study showed that the clay was more effective than insecticides. The second thing Lauren is researching are these 8-foot wide sheets of plastic called reflective mulch. The idea is that it should reach where the Sid cannot find the host plant. It could be that it blinds them or causes a visual deterrent. How does it work?

Somehow, we have SIDS, we have them, but we get them at a reduced price. A few years ago, farmers discovered that placing plastic bags around young trees could help them get stronger before infection. Lauren is now studying how effective these individual protective covers or ipcs can be, so this is the IPC mesh and as she can see it has little holes in it. You can see my hand very clearly wind sun rain everything goes through here the goal is really to keep that asian citrus CID off the tree and then if you look underneath this is our watering the young trees will grow on the ipcs for 2 years like this You can see the trees are not perfect, we will still have some things on them, we have some pest problems here, but you know they look great compared to what is in the open field and this will really give our trees a Fighting Chance once they are in the environment and could become infected with Seas' scientific journey, G vashish believes the key is in the soil, we have been learning that trees need these nutrients to fight infection of citrus trees due to this disease.

They have very small roots or fewer roots, so they are not very efficient in collecting nutrients, it is as if a job for 10 people was done by one person. Same with roots, he found that giving smaller doses of fertilizer and water more frequently helps. Diseased roots absorb nutrients better and it is similar to us, six small meals each day instead of three large meals is better. The same goes for fertilizer and irrigation. Smaller doses are better than larger ones. Larry uses fertilizers custom designed for his trees and is also planting younger ones. One of our strategies to deal with greening is to plant uh The Groves at higher densities.

We are planting 300 trees per acre compared to 140 to 150 trees per acre before dealing with the disease, so if you know all the trees will become infected with more planted, hopefully some. Will Survive Growers has also tried releasing predatory wasps and spraying insecticides as long as there is no miracle solution in combination, these short term solutions have worked, you can stop the decline we have been fighting against Citrus Greening for 15 years and as long as the industry does not thriving, we are definitely surviving, but the problem is that all of these approaches add an additional $600 per acre to production costs for producers, our income has been reduced by more than half based on individual growth.

Growers are losing money and many couldn't accept the losses. By early 2022, half of Florida's orange growers had left the industry, so while he waits for a long-term solution, Larry is taking the hit to be able to. Keeping harvesting the same way your family always does has workers quickly picking the oranges and bagging them once. They have a good lot. Pickers place them in bag baskets in the Grove. Workers then transport the oranges to the packing facility just down the street. We have eight digital cameras that take a photo of each piece of fruit as it travels through the packaging line. we use an electronic sorter to divide the harvest by color if they are orange enough the fruit is cleaned and tapped with a coating of natural wax preserves the fruit uh extends its shelf life today thanks to hlb Larry packs half as many boxes as he did 17 years ago if the oranges are too green.

Larry knows they will be difficult to sell on the fresh side, so he sends them to be pressed at Florida's natural mill in Lake Wales. Larry owns the juicing plant along with other local producers. As part of the company's cooperative, about 90% of the fruit grown at Steak goes into orange juice, but like Growers, the factory has been sourcing fewer oranges, so there is less efficiency at the plant. , with a lower volume of fruit, the factory had to close one of its three processing lines. Currently, 60,000 boxes of oranges arrive at the plant from Cooperative Farms throughout central Florida, which is about 30,000 less than before.

Within 24 hours of harvesting, we juice the fruit. This machine squeezes the juice from each orange. We take out the seeds and also collect the pulp where we can add it to whatever degree we want, let the juice be pasteurized and then pumped into cardboard boxes, but remember that greening affects the natural sugar content of the oranges, so Florida's Natural has to mix infected oranges with sweeter ones from different regions. or even Seasons still tastes like orange juice, it's just not as sweet nowadays the factory produces about a third less than the pregs. Greening need a home for their fruit where they can get the maximum value that can hopefully sustain their operations until a solution is found.

Many scientists believe that the long-term solution lies in reengineering nature, whether genetically changing the insect or raising citrus trees naturally. Ultimately, a tree that is resistant or tolerant to the disease will be key; That is the project that Fred Gitter and his team are carrying out. At the University of Florida they are working on obtaining an orange variety resistant to HLB, which means that even if the disease appears, the tree will not get sick. To do this, take two different types of trees, perhaps one with delicious oranges and another with delicious oranges. which is hardy and essentially has the couple and hopefully your child will still taste good but won't get hlb.

That's really the Holy Grail of citrus analysis research, but it's not easy to find a resistant orange - it's like searching for a genetic needle in hay. It is extremely difficult to grow new oranges. We know of some types of trees related to oranges that are resistant and we are trying to access the genetics of those resistant types through crossbreeding. Fred says it could take more than a decade, so it's long-term. There is always an element of chance in this, but armed with that Miracle-resistant tree they could be better prepared to face future diseases. It's an interconnected global world we live in, people and plant diseases move around quite freely, so there will be another problem, another disease.

I believe science will continue to provide new tools that will make growing citrus easier over time. I look forward to those days. I'm sure we will have other challenges we face over time, but today Citrus Greening is here to stay wild. As oyster populations around the world are plummeting, we head to Virginia to see how the Ward Oyster Company uses algae tanks to grow 3.5 million oysters each year. This is John Vigata. He began his career in the water when he was 13 years old. I started putting oysters. Caged in 1995, this aquaculture farm spreads over 884 acres the size of more than 147 Roman coliseums.

Includes a nursery and part of Virginia's Mobjack Bay. The cultivation of an oyster begins in the hatchery. Here biologist Chris Smith places 3,000 adult oysters in a shallow tank called a spawning table then artificially creates the conditions that cause the oysters to spawn we are controlling the temperature in the tank specifically it is the all you can eat buffet preparing them to spawn when Spawning oysters release their eggs and sperm directly into the water. The eggs and sperm are placed in tanks where they develop into oyster larvae. Each year 1 billion baby oysters are produced in these tanks, they stay there for about 3 weeks feeding on algae and growing shells.

We grow around seven different species of algae to create a menu for our oysters and clams. It is amazing to see the algae bloom and then watch the oysters and clams grow in our facility. It is very rewarding when the oysters get to be about 1/4 long, they are placed outside in rising tanks and it is a system that allows a lot of water to pass through the oysters giving them a super abundant amount of food after about 2 months feeding, the staff check the size of the oysters, we will take these oysters here that are bigger and I will go to a cage to go overboard and then these oysters here will go back to the system to grow more until they can reach this size and eventually they will go into a cage the cages full of oysters are then thrown into the mobjack bay we have around 2500 to 3000 cages contained in all the cages we have in mobjack bay it probably has around 30 million oysters which is a lot of oysters if they all They will be harvested at the same time and put in your freezer.

You could eat more than 800 oysters every day for 100 years and still have well-done leftovers. Farmers closely monitor the weather. Excessive rainfall can dilute the salt in the water, which could kill the oysters. Water temperature is also a factor for oysters to grow at rest between 60°C. F and 80° if you go higher, it is so hot that they will stop growing or slow down significantly if you go below, they will go dormant if all goes well after 6 months, the cages are removed from the water and the oysters are brought in. to a separator, this machine sorts them by size, if they are not big enough to sell, they return to the water.

It can take 1-2 years for oysters to get from the farm to the market after splitting. Market size oysters are washed, labeled with order information and placed in boxes. Once the oysters leave the bay the clock starts ticking, the team has to harvest the oysters, transport them to the store, add ice, package them and place them in the refrigerator within 2 hours to meet FDA guidelines , the boxes are placed in a refrigerated truck and shipped to distributors throughout the US who pay about 40 cents per oyster in Virginia. Wild cut oysters actually sell for less than about 30 cents.

We probably sell our Market oysters to 10 or 15 different states in the country, but our oysters end up everywhere and occasionally for local consumption. orders that John delivers himself and then you have the label here, thank you very much, okay, customers say they are fresh, they are delicious since 1996, they have gone from growing 100,000 oysters a year to 3.5 million in 2019, plus sell. Oysters to Eat The company also sells about 70 million young oysters each year to farmers up and down the East Coast. Aquaculture is one of the fastest growing food production sectors in the world, while the amount of wild-caught seafood has not increased much since then. demand in the 1980s has increased almost 150% aquaculture is filling the gap it is predicted that by 2030 60% of the fish available for human consumption will come from aquaculture Virginia hasMade a big bet and has doubled down on oyster farming.

Today the state is the largest producer of oysters on the East Coast, but the pandemic has affected business like no natural disaster we have ever had. The market value of oysters and restaurant orders have plummeted, so we are being affected by both reduced orders and a reduced price for the product we sell. and on top of that, after a stellar 2019, John stocked the bay with hopes of an abundant future, we have a record amount of product in the water and our sales are down almost 50%, while 20120 was a rollercoaster for Ward Oyster Company sales. I finally started picking up John is optimistic about the future, whatever happens, he plans to be in the water.

I love being on the water, my office is on the water, it doesn't get any better than that and salt water is available. my veins