What Does Florida Grow? From Citrus to Vegetables

Florida grows a remarkably wide range of crops, from the oranges and grapefruit that defined its agricultural identity for over a century to winter vegetables, sugarcane, strawberries, tropical fruits, and ornamental plants worth billions of dollars annually. The state’s subtropical climate, long growing season, and varied soil types allow it to produce food when much of the rest of the country cannot, which is why Florida remains one of the top agricultural states in the U.S. even as its most famous crop faces an existential threat from disease. What the state actually grows today looks quite different from what many people imagine.

Citrus and the Disease That Changed Everything

For most of the twentieth century, Florida and citrus were nearly synonymous. The state dominated U.S. orange juice production and shipped fresh grapefruit nationwide. That era has been dramatically altered by citrus greening, known formally as huanglongbing (HLB), a bacterial disease spread by a tiny insect called the Asian citrus psyllid. The bacterium invades the phloem tissue of citrus trees, causing swelling between cell walls and progressive degeneration that eventually makes the tree produce small, bitter, lopsided fruit before declining and dying.¹ Once a tree is infected, the disease spreads internally from flush to flush even without the insect vector continuing to feed on it, which makes containment extremely difficult.²

Florida’s citrus production has dropped by well over half since HLB was first confirmed in the state in 2005. Groves that once blanketed central Florida have been abandoned or converted to other uses. The decline is not solely due to disease. Historical analysis shows that cold air outbreaks and landfalling hurricanes have repeatedly reshaped the borders of Florida’s Citrus Belt and the Indian River District over the decades, pushing production southward and reducing acreage even before greening arrived.³ HLB accelerated what weather events had already started. Today, Florida still grows oranges, grapefruit, and specialty citrus like tangerines and tangelos, but on a fraction of its former acreage. Researchers continue to pursue resistant varieties and treatments, though no cure has emerged.

Winter Vegetables and Why They Matter

When the rest of the eastern United States is frozen, Florida’s farms are shipping tomatoes, bell peppers, cucumbers, squash, snap beans, sweet corn, and other fresh-market vegetables. This winter production window is one of the state’s greatest agricultural advantages. Florida is consistently among the top producers of fresh tomatoes and bell peppers in the country, and the industry is concentrated primarily in south-central and southwest Florida, where mild winters allow crops to grow from roughly October through May.

Growing these crops in Florida’s sandy, low-organic-matter soils requires careful management of water and fertilizer. Bell pepper production, for instance, relies heavily on plasticulture, a system where raised beds are covered in plastic mulch with drip irrigation running underneath. Research in Florida has shown that both nitrogen rate and irrigation rate significantly affect pepper yields, and that optimizing both together produces the best results. A combination of around 280 kilograms per hectare of nitrogen and irrigation set close to the reference evaporation rate produced the highest marketable yields in trials.⁴ This kind of precision agriculture is typical across Florida’s vegetable industry, where growers cannot simply rely on deep, rich topsoil the way farmers in the Midwest can.

Watermelon is another major Florida crop, and it faces its own challenges. Whitefly-transmitted viruses have become a serious concern over the past two decades. Squash vein yellowing virus was first identified in Florida squash and watermelon in 2005 and causes a severe vine decline as crops approach harvest. Cucurbit leaf crumple virus and cucurbit yellow stunting disorder virus have also been detected in Florida watermelon more recently.⁵ Tomato crops face their own viral threat: tomato yellow leaf curl virus, also whitefly-transmitted, was first detected in south Florida in 1997 and has been a persistent problem since. Managing these pests and diseases is a constant battle for Florida vegetable growers, who often rely on resistant varieties, reflective mulches, and integrated pest management strategies rather than insecticides alone.

Sugarcane in the Everglades Agricultural Area

South of Lake Okeechobee lies the Everglades Agricultural Area, or EAA, a roughly 700,000-acre region of organic muck soils that supports one of Florida’s most valuable crops: sugarcane. Florida produces more sugarcane than any other state, and the EAA is the center of that industry. The dark, nutrient-rich muck soils formed over thousands of years from decomposing wetland vegetation, and they behave very differently from the sandy soils found elsewhere in the state. These soils are high in nitrogen from organic matter mineralization, but they require careful management of phosphorus, potassium, and micronutrients to support high yields.⁶

One surprising finding about the EAA is that soil depth varies enormously across the region, ranging from as little as 10 centimeters to over a meter, with an average of about 51 centimeters. More than half of the area has soil depths below 50 centimeters. You might expect that shallow soils would hurt yields, but research has found no significant relationship between soil depth and sugarcane production in the EAA. The ample water and nutrient availability in the region, combined with advances in soil testing, nutrient management, and plant breeding, appear to compensate for shallow soils.⁷ Sugarcane variety and crop age matter far more for yield than the depth of soil beneath the plants.

The EAA’s agricultural activity comes with environmental trade-offs. Phosphorus runoff from farms in the region flows toward Lake Okeechobee and the Everglades, contributing to water quality problems that have been a political and ecological flashpoint for decades. Over the past two decades, the implementation of best management practices has significantly reduced phosphorus loads from the EAA. Constructed wetlands and stormwater treatment areas have been the primary tools, with phosphorus removal efficiency ranging from about 20 to 39 percent at the lower end and 60 to 79 percent at the higher end, depending on the treatment approach.⁸ Progress has been real, but the tension between agricultural productivity and Everglades restoration remains one of the defining environmental issues in the state.

Strawberries and the Winter Berry Window

Florida is the winter strawberry capital of the United States, with the vast majority of production concentrated around Plant City in Hillsborough County. The state’s strawberry season runs from roughly November through March, filling supermarket shelves at a time when California’s production is at a seasonal low. Florida grows strawberry varieties specifically bred for subtropical conditions, where the plants need short days and mild cool temperatures to fruit rather than the long chill periods that temperate varieties require.

The University of Florida’s breeding program has been central to the industry’s success, developing cultivars with improved flavor, fruit quality, early yield, and disease resistance using a combination of traditional field breeding and molecular tools.⁹ Varieties like ‘Florida Radiance’ and ‘Florida Beauty’ were developed specifically for the state’s conditions. Getting early yield is especially important because the earliest berries of the season command the highest prices. The breeding program’s focus on subtropical and Mediterranean climates also means that Florida-developed varieties are grown in parts of North Africa, the Middle East, and other warm-winter regions around the world.

Tropical Fruits on the Rise

As citrus acreage has contracted, a quieter transformation has been taking place in south Florida: the expansion of tropical fruit crops. Commercial tropical fruit acreage is growing outside its traditional base of extreme south Florida and coastal counties, partly because Florida’s climate has become significantly warmer, with less frequent freezing events and milder cold snaps in south-central counties.¹⁰ Former citrus growers and new entrepreneurs are turning to these alternative crops as a way to stay in business.

The range of tropical fruits grown commercially in south Florida is wider than many people realize. A survey of fruit fields in the Homestead area sampled 89 orchards spanning avocado, guava, mamey sapote, longan, starfruit, mango, lychee, dragon fruit, passionfruit, and banana.¹¹ Guava was the most commonly sampled crop in that study, with 42 fields, followed by avocado with 18. These are not backyard curiosities; they are commercial operations producing fruit for both local markets and broader distribution.

Whether a given tropical fruit crop can succeed in a particular Florida location depends on several abiotic factors: tolerance to flooded or waterlogged soil, ability to handle the salt levels found in some Florida soils and irrigation water, and the temperature range the crop needs for growth, flowering, and fruit production.¹⁰ South Florida sits on limestone bedrock with a high water table, so drainage and flood tolerance are practical concerns that growers deal with constantly. Avocado orchards in Miami-Dade County, for example, are often planted on raised mounds of crushed limestone to keep the root zone above the water table. A single hard freeze can still wipe out years of growth on a tropical fruit tree, so the expansion northward has real limits despite the warming trend.

North Florida Crops Most People Overlook

When people think of Florida agriculture, they picture oranges and tomatoes, not cotton and peanuts. But north Florida has a distinctly different agricultural identity from the southern half of the state. The panhandle and north-central regions grow row crops more typical of the Deep South, including cotton, peanuts, corn, soybeans, and forage grasses like bahiagrass. Some farms in north Florida operate integrated crop-livestock rotation systems, alternating between pasture grasses and row crops over multi-year cycles. Research on one such system used a four-year rotation with two years of bahiagrass pasture followed by peanut and then cotton.¹²

These rotations are practical for several reasons. Bahiagrass builds soil organic matter and supports cattle grazing, while the peanut crop fixes nitrogen in the soil, reducing the fertilizer needs of the following cotton crop. North Florida’s climate is warm enough for cotton but gets enough winter chill for crops like blueberries, which have become a significant industry in the region as well. The state is now one of the top blueberry producers in the eastern U.S., with north-central Florida farms harvesting fruit in April and May, well ahead of production in the Carolinas and New Jersey.

Ornamental Plants and the Nursery Industry

One of Florida’s most economically significant agricultural sectors gets very little public attention: ornamental horticulture. The state’s nurseries and landscape operations produce tropical foliage plants, flowering plants, palms, shrubs, sod, and other ornamental stock for distribution across the country. Florida’s warm climate allows year-round production of plants that would require heated greenhouses in northern states, giving its nurseries a natural cost advantage.¹³

The industry is concentrated in south and central Florida, with major nursery clusters in Miami-Dade, Palm Beach, Orange, and Lake counties. Much of the tropical foliage that ends up in office lobbies, hotel atriums, and garden centers across the eastern U.S. originated in a Florida nursery. Sod production is also significant, with Florida-grown varieties of St. Augustine grass, Bermuda grass, and Zoysia shipped throughout the Southeast. The ornamental sector has been more resilient than citrus to disease pressures, though it faces its own challenges from invasive pests, rising land costs, and labor shortages.

How Climate Shapes What Grows Where

Florida stretches over 400 miles from north to south, and that distance encompasses a meaningful range of climate conditions. The panhandle experiences occasional hard freezes and has a climate that overlaps with south Georgia and Alabama. Central Florida is solidly subtropical, with freezes that are becoming less frequent. South Florida, especially the coastal strip below Lake Okeechobee, is essentially tropical, with frost so rare that cold-sensitive crops like mango and avocado can survive for decades.

This gradient explains why the state’s agriculture is so diverse. A peanut farmer in Jackson County and a mango grower in Homestead are both Florida farmers, but they face entirely different growing conditions, pest pressures, and market dynamics. The warming trend that has allowed tropical fruits to push northward has been a mixed blessing: while it opens new opportunities, it also means more year-round pest pressure, since cold snaps that once knocked back insect populations are becoming rarer. The whitefly-transmitted viruses that plague vegetable crops, for instance, thrive in warm conditions and can persist through mild winters that would have killed their insect vectors a few decades ago.

Hurricanes add another layer of uncertainty. A single major storm can strip fruit from trees, flood fields, destroy nursery stock, and set back perennial crops by years. The combination of hurricanes and freeze events has historically been the most damaging weather pattern for Florida agriculture, with cold outbreaks and tropical systems reshaping production regions when they occur close together in time.³ Growers across all sectors build resilience through crop insurance, diversification, and infrastructure like windbreaks and frost protection systems, but the risk is always present.

The Pest and Disease Pressure That Comes with Warm Weather

Florida’s warm, humid climate is excellent for growing plants. It is equally excellent for growing the organisms that attack them. The state faces some of the most intense agricultural pest and disease pressure in the continental U.S., and managing that pressure is a defining feature of farming there.

Beyond citrus greening and whitefly-transmitted viruses in vegetables, Florida growers contend with a long list of problems. Nematodes, microscopic worms that feed on plant roots, are a persistent issue in the sandy soils where many crops are grown. In tropical fruit orchards around Homestead, research has examined how soil pH, organic matter, and texture influence the distribution of plant-parasitic nematodes across different fruit crops.¹¹ Understanding these relationships helps growers anticipate which fields are most at risk and target treatments accordingly.

Florida’s position as a major international port of entry also means it is often the first place where new invasive agricultural pests arrive in the U.S. The Asian citrus psyllid that spread HLB, the giant African land snail, the red palm weevil, and numerous plant diseases have all made early appearances in the state. Federal and state inspectors conduct constant surveillance at ports and borders, and quarantine zones are established quickly when new threats are detected. For growers, this biosecurity landscape means staying vigilant and adapting to new threats that may not have existed when they planted their current crops.

Newer Directions in Florida Agriculture

Several trends are reshaping what Florida grows. Hemp became legal to cultivate in the state after the 2018 Farm Bill, and some growers, particularly those who lost citrus acreage, have experimented with it. The results have been mixed, with Florida’s humidity posing challenges for a crop that is prone to mold. Indoor farming and controlled-environment agriculture have also gained a foothold, with several large-scale operations producing leafy greens and herbs in climate-controlled facilities. These operations use far less water than field farming and are not exposed to hurricanes or freezes, though their energy costs are substantial.

Peach production has expanded in north-central Florida using low-chill varieties that do not need the extended cold periods required by traditional peach cultivars. These varieties were developed for areas that get just a few hundred hours below a certain temperature threshold during winter, making them well suited to Florida’s borderline climate. The state’s cattle industry, though less visible than its crop sector, is also significant. Florida is one of the largest cow-calf producing states east of the Mississippi, with ranches concentrated in central Florida’s interior grasslands, sometimes in the very landscapes that once supported citrus groves.