LAKE WALES, Fla. >> As Trevor Murphy pulls up to his dad’s 20-acre grove in one of the fastest-growing counties in the United States, he points to the cookie-cutter, one-story homes encroaching on the orange trees from all sides.

“At some point, this isn’t going to be an orange grove anymore,” Murphy, a third-generation grower, says as he gazes at the rows of trees in Lake Wales, Florida. “You look around here, and it’s all houses and that’s going to happen here.”

Polk County, which includes Lake Wales, contains more acres of citrus than any other county in Florida. In 2023, more people moved to Polk County than any other county in the country.

Population growth, hurricanes and a vicious citrus greening disease have left the Florida orange industry reeling. Consumers are drinking less orange juice, citrus growers are folding up their operations in the state and the major juice company Tropicana is struggling to stay afloat. With huge numbers of people moving into Florida’s orange growing areas, developers are increasingly building homes on what were once orange groves.

Many growers are now making the difficult decision to sell orange groves that have been in their families for generations to developers building homes to house the growing population.

Others, like Murphy, are sticking it out, hoping to survive until a bug-free tree or other options arrive to repel the disease or treat the trees.

When Hurricane Irma blasted through the state’s orange belt in 2017, Florida’s signature crop already had been on a downward spiral for two decades because of the greening disease. Next came a major freeze and two more hurricanes in 2022, followed by two hurricanes last year. A tree that loses branches and foliage in a hurricane can take three years to recover, Murphy said.

Those catastrophes contributed to a 90% decline in orange production over the past two decades. Citrus groves in Florida, which covered more than 832,00 acres at the turn of the century, populated scarcely 275,000 acres last year, and California has eclipsed Florida as the nation’s leading citrus producer.

“Losing the citrus industry is not an option. This industry is ... so ingrained in Florida. Citrus is synonymous with Florida,” Matt Joyner, CEO of trade association Florida Citrus Mutual told Florida lawmakers.

Nevertheless, Alico Inc., one of Florida’s biggest growers, announced this year that it plans to wind down its citrus operations on more than 53,000 acres, saying its production has declined by almost three-quarters in a decade.

That decision hurts processors, including Tropicana, which rely on Alico’s fruit to produce orange juice and must now operate at reduced capacity. Orange juice consumption in the U.S. has been declining for the past two decades despite a small bump during the COVID-19 pandemic.

A prominent growers group, the Gulf Citrus Growers Association, closed its doors last year.

Pressure on citrus farming is also growing from one of the state’s other biggest industries: real estate.

Florida expanded by more than 467,000 people last year to 23 million people, making it the third largest state in the nation. And more homes must be built to house that ever-growing population.

Some prominent, multigenerational citrus families each have been putting hundreds of acres of groves up for sale for millions of dollars, or as much as $25,000 an acre.

Murphy owns several hundred acres of groves and says he has no plans to abandon the industry, though last year he closed a citrus grove caretaking business that managed thousands of acres for other owners.

However, he also has a real estate license, which is useful given the amount of land that is changing hands. He recently sold off acres in Polk County to a home developer and has used that money to pay off debt and develop plans to replant thousands of trees in more productive groves.

“I would like to think that we’re at the bottom, and we’re starting to climb back up that hill,” Murphy said.

A whole ecosystem of businesses dependent on Florida citrus is at risk if the crops fail, including 33,000 full-time and part-time jobs and an economic impact of $6.8 billion in Florida alone. Besides growers, there are juice processors, grove caretakers, fertilizer sellers, packing houses, nurseries and candy manufacturers, all hoping for a fix for citrus greening disease.

Tom Davidson, whose parents founded Davidson of Dundee Citrus Candy and Jelly Factory in Lake Wales in 1966, says the drop in citrus production has impacted what flavor jellies the business is able to produce and the prices it charges to customers.

“We’re really hoping that the scientists can get this figured out so we can we can get back to what we did,” Davidson said.

Researchers have been working for eight years on a genetically modified tree that can kill the tiny insects responsible for citrus greening. The process involves inserting a gene into a citrus tree that produces a protein that can kill baby Asian citrus psyllids by making holes in their guts, according to Lukasz Stelinski, an entomology professor at the University of Florida.