Citrus

Why One California Farmer is Betting Big on Algae for Fertility

Mon, 09 Mar 2026 14:44:34 GMT

Rows of citrus trees stretch across the landscape under the California sun, their canopies forming neat green corridors between irrigation lines and tractor paths. Some trees are newly trimmed, others older and thicker from years of growth. It’s the kind of orchard scene that has long defined agriculture in this part of the state, where permanent crops dominate the landscape and generations of farmers have worked to coax productivity from difficult soils and an increasingly unpredictable water supply.

For fifth-generation farmer Justin Wylie , these groves are more than just another orchard to manage. They represent an opportunity to rethink how soil works on his farm and whether biology — specifically algae — can play a larger role in the future of California agriculture.

Wylie and his family farm roughly 4,000 acres across California’s Central Valley. Some of that land has been in the family for generations, while other acres are leased. Like many farms in the region, the operation produces permanent crops such as pistachios and citrus, commodities that require long-term planning and careful soil management.

“This is a long-term lease with an investment company partner,” Wylie says. “And we just entered into that lease last year. It’s a 15-year lease with a five-year extension.”

One of the ranches he’s currently working to improve came through a recent leasing agreement that gives the family time to invest in the land and experiment with new approaches. That time horizon matters. With permanent crops like oranges, orchard decisions can affect productivity for decades. The trees must be pruned, fertilized and irrigated carefully year after year, and the soil beneath them has to remain functional through increasingly hot and dry growing seasons.

When Wylie’s team first took over the ranch, some improvements were necessary before any new ideas could be tested.

“We were really lucky on this ranch,” Wylie says. “The previous guys, they did let some of the trees get overgrown, so we did have to come in and push a hedge and top and resize those trees.”

While the orchard needed structural work above ground, Wylie says the bigger opportunity lies beneath the surface. The ranch is now part of a broader effort on the farm to transition a portion of the acres toward organic and regenerative systems.

“For the majority of the ranch, as far as fertility, the soils, the condition of the ranch,” he says, “I think the big thing with this ranch is transitioning from a conventional model to an organic regenerative, which is part of our commitment in the lease. It’s part of the model of the lease here — that we transition the ranch from conventional to certified organic and regenerative.”

The transition is happening gradually. Wylie says roughly 25% of the farm’s acres are currently part of that shift, allowing the family to experiment with new soil-building practices without risking the entire operation.

But the push to explore regenerative systems didn’t begin with markets or policy. It started with a deeply personal experience.

A Personal Connection to Soil Health

Wylie says his interest in soil biology and regenerative farming took shape nearly a decade ago, around 2015 or 2016. At the time, his family was dealing with a serious health challenge involving his young son.

The experience pushed him to start researching nutrition, gut health and the human microbiome — topics that would eventually reshape how he thought about farming.

“[My son] was sick as a kid, and so we were doing everything we could to heal him,” Wylie says. “His gut ended up in the hospital a few times with an autism diagnosis.”

Doctors and therapists offered guidance, but the recommendations didn’t sit well with Wylie.

“And then at the time, the doctors and the therapist told us basically, ‘Practice acceptance,’” he says.

Instead, Wylie started searching for more information about gut health and what researchers were learning about the microbiome. Over time, he began seeing parallels between the human digestive system and the biological activity that happens in healthy soils.

“They started figuring out that autistic kids had very weak gut microbiomes,” Wylie says. “And so when you make that connection as a farmer and you start saying, ‘What are all the things I can do at home to not stress that?’”

That question eventually carried over into his work in the field. The farm’s first experiment with regenerative practices was modest.

“We started on 40 acres of pistachios, playing around with it,” he says. “What can we do here growing in a different system?”

At the same time, the regenerative agriculture movement was gaining momentum online, making it easier for farmers to explore new ideas.

“At the time, there were quite a few regenerative agronomists out there releasing podcasts and YouTube videos,” Wylie says. “So the information was there. It was never on my radar before. But once you join that community and industry, it’s pretty interesting.”

Building on What Came Before

Even as Wylie explores new biological tools, he says the farm’s current practices still build heavily on the work done by previous generations.

His father’s generation invested heavily in agronomy research and orchard management strategies, developing systems that helped the farm stay productive in California’s demanding growing environment. From pruning methods to fertilizer programs, many of those lessons still guide how the farm operates today.

Rather than abandoning those systems, Wylie says his goal is to refine them.

“It’s really a tweak,” he says. “In my mind it’s a slight change in the method, not a complete start over.”

The farm continues to rely on the knowledge accumulated through decades of conventional farming, while gradually introducing new practices aimed at improving soil biology.

“We’re just trying to make tweaks to the system that we’re already operating in on the other ranches to see if we can do this a different way,” Wylie says.

One of the biggest challenges in that transition is managing fertility.

California orchards have historically relied on precise fertilizer programs to keep trees productive. But moving toward organic or regenerative inputs can create a different nutrient dynamic, especially during the early years of transition.

Wylie says growers sometimes underestimate how sensitive orchards can be during that shift.

Managing the Transition Carefully

According to Wylie, one of the most common mistakes farmers make when transitioning to regenerative systems is reducing fertilizer too quickly.

He says orchards that have spent decades under conventional management are accustomed to intensive nutrient programs, and abruptly changing that system can cause yields to fall sharply.

On some ranches where regenerative practices have been in place for several years, Wylie says the difference in soil structure is already noticeable.

“There’s other ranches we’ve been farming regenerative for five years,” he says. “You can stick your hand in the soil and get your fingers down right there on the berms next to the trees — it’s chocolate cake.”

But he warns farmers shouldn’t assume that kind of soil health will appear immediately after switching systems.

“Until that day, do not pull back,” Wylie says.

He says the biggest mistake happens when growers assume they can immediately match their old fertility programs using organic inputs.

“That’s the mistake that growers make,” he says. “They think I’m going organic regenerative, I can match dollar for dollar, I can do the same thing I was doing conventionally.”

Instead, Wylie says the transition often produces what he calls a “J-curve.”

“You’re going to see that J-curve,” he says. “I mean, it’s going to tank.”

To avoid that, his farm relies heavily on testing.

“We pull a lot of sap samples, multiple tissues and soils per year,” Wylie says. “Kind of watching our fertility and making sure these trees are fed.”

He says growers must remember trees grown in conventional systems are used to consistent nutrient availability.

“The soil has been farmed a certain way,” he says. “These trees are used to being fed intensively in that conventional system.”

And organic fertilizers don’t always behave the same way.

“The organic fertilizers just don’t work as well,” Wylie says. “So you have to be careful.”

Introducing Algae Into the System

As Wylie searched for ways to accelerate soil improvement, one newer tool caught his attention: microalgae.

The technology comes from soil health company MyLand, which produces living algae on farms and distributes it through irrigation systems.

“We’re probably in our fourth or fifth season,” Wylie says.

The idea behind the system is relatively simple. Rather than applying microbes directly to the soil, the system produces algae that help stimulate microbial activity already present in the soil ecosystem.

Jeff Tuel says the technology centers around specialized tanks designed to grow algae on the farm itself.

“We call these APVs, algae producing vessels,” Tuel says. “And essentially, the sole purpose is to grow algae here.”

Water from the farm is stored inside the vessels, where conditions are controlled to encourage rapid algae growth.

“So for all intents and purposes, this is kind of like the algae producing container,” Tuel says.

From there, the algae are delivered through irrigation systems already used on the farm.

“And we try to keep that holding tank to a level where if the irrigator is irrigating a 12-hour set, 24, 36,” Tuel says. “Our main objective is for them to never run dry of algae.”

Production is adjusted to match the grower’s irrigation schedule.

“We harvest according to the grower’s irrigation schedule,” he says.

Another important step happens before the system is even installed. MyLand scientists collect algae samples from the farm itself, identifying native strains that are already adapted to the environment.

“The reason native is important is because it’s used to the pH, it’s used to the droughts, the floods, everything Mother Nature’s thrown at it,” Tuel says.

Because those organisms already exist in the local ecosystem, they are more likely to survive once applied to the soil.

“Its odds of surviving and actually making an impact in that ecosystem are far greater,” he says.

Microalgae also sits at the base of the soil’s microbial food web.

“Microalgae is actually the base of the microbial food chain,” Tuel says. “All the bugs and beneficials in the soil are feeding off of it.”

Rather than introducing microbes, the strategy is to stimulate the microbes already present.

“I like to say instead of a bug-and-a-jug approach, we are ringing the dinner bell for the microbes,” Tuel says. “It’s kind of an all-you-can-eat buffet for microbes to get them moving and active.”

Tackling Difficult Soils

For Wylie, improving soil biology could help solve one of the Central Valley’s most persistent challenges: poor soil structure.

Many orchard soils in the region contain very low levels of organic matter, which limits their ability to hold water and maintain structure through the growing season.

“We have about 0.5% soil organic matter,” Wylie says. “Our water holding capacity is very low.”

That lack of organic matter can cause irrigation problems later in the summer.

“A lot of times these soils as we’re irrigating during the season will lock up,” he says.

Early in the season, irrigation water infiltrates the soil fairly easily.

“You start with very good water infiltration in April, May, June,” Wylie says.

But conditions change as the summer progresses.

“By the time you get to July, August, when you really need it, it’s very difficult to push water down in the soil,” he says.

For farmers trying to manage water carefully in California’s dry climate, that creates a major challenge.

“These soils are not very functional for us as farmers,” Wylie says.

Tuel says stimulating microbial activity can gradually improve those conditions.

“When you get those microbes to start moving and firing, you’re going to start to build soil aggregate,” he says.

Better aggregation can help water move through the soil while also improving nutrient availability.

“If it’s a high-salt ground, we can start to leach out some of those salts,” Tuel says.

Algae may also influence soil chemistry.

“Algae is also going to help regulate the pH in the soil so we can start to free up some locked-up nutrients,” he says.

Thinking Long-Term

While installing an on-farm algae system requires investment, Wylie says he sees it as part of a long-term strategy for improving soil performance.

“In a biological system like MyLand, it’s about the same cost as a soil amendment program out here, depending on how much acreage you’re using,” Wylie says.

The difference is the system focuses on building biological activity rather than simply adding nutrients.

“But it’s a long-term solution,” he says. “It’s not going to work overnight.”

Instead, the goal is to strengthen the soil’s microbiome so it can better buffer environmental stresses.

“It’s actually creating a buffer by just supercharging the microbiome that’s in the soil,” Wylie says.

That biological activity may help address several common soil issues in California orchards.

“Everything feeds on it,” he says. “It’s overcoming high salt, high chlorides.”

Even trace mineral challenges may improve over time.

“In some cases in California, we have very high boron in some areas,” Wylie says.

He believes increased biological activity may help mitigate those problems faster than traditional soil-building methods alone.

“Microalgae being put into the system can actually overcome those salts that might take 10 or 15 years of compost and cover crops,” he says. “You can accomplish in a few years by using MyLand.”

The Pressure on California Farmers

The search for new tools is happening at a time when farming in California is becoming increasingly expensive.

Data from USDA shows the state continues to rank as the most expensive place in the country to grow crops, driven by high labor, energy and input costs.

Those economic pressures are compounded by growing regulatory expectations.

Wylie believes California farmers are already facing some of the strictest scrutiny in global agriculture.

“I think the state’s already looking at it very closely,” he says. “I think they’re going to put more pressure on farmers in California.”

Compared with other agricultural regions, he says California producers are operating under unique constraints.

“Other than the European Union, there is no one in the world that’s under as much pressure as a California farmer to change the way we do things,” Wylie says.

Because of that, he believes farmers must take the lead in finding workable solutions.

“We need to figure this out,” he says. “And I want to figure it out before the government gets involved and tries to tell me how to do it.”

Government incentive programs exist, but Wylie believes the real challenge is making soil health practices economically viable.

“They can offer me some incentives,” he says. “We have healthy soils out here. They give you a little compost and cover crop seed.”

Ultimately, though, growers need systems that work on their own.

“We need to figure this out and we need to make it economical and profitable before the state comes in,” Wylie says.

Because once regulations remove certain tools, farmers may have little room to adapt.

“Now you’re forced to figure it out with your back against the wall,” he says. “We don’t want that.”

For Wylie, the answer may lie beneath the soil surface where billions of microbes, fueled by algae, could quietly reshape how California farms grow their crops. And by doing so now, Wylie hopes he’s able to find ways to continue to grow productive crops in California, despite increased regulations.

Why U.S. Agriculture Needs More AI Investment to Stay Ahead in Global Crop Innovation Race

Tue, 20 May 2025 18:15:48 GMT

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a key tool in accelerating the discovery, development and manufacturing of new crop protection molecules to fight yield-robbing weeds, pests, and diseases in U.S. farm fields.

The technology helps researchers shorten the discovery window and find new and novel active-ingredient molecules that are much more difficult and expensive to uncover using traditional research methods.

That was among the talking points that emerged from Tuesday’s congressional hearing on AI in farming, held in front of the U.S. House of Representatives Science, Space, and Technology Committee in Washington, D.C.

Related: The New Space Race: Why America Must Focus On AI

At the hearing, key agricultural stakeholders advocated for increasing government investment in AI technology and infrastructure. The group warned Congress that America’s status as a world leader in AI has been usurped by Japan and China, while other rival countries are also gunning for top positions.

Testifying on behalf of U.S. agriculture was Corteva Vice President of Agricultural Solutions Brian Lutz, University of Florida associate professor Chris Swale and University of Illinois assistant professor Boris Camiletti.

“AI is without a doubt one of the most profound technologies ever to be invented,” Lutz said. “We believe there is tremendous opportunity for our government to support and incentivize advanced innovation — including by leveraging the benefits of AI — to benefit American farmers. If we want to win, we need to move smarter and faster than our competition. Corteva believes with the support of our government, we will do exactly that.”

Lutz said researchers at Corteva recently used AI to model how 10,000 different molecules might be used in crop protection, all within a matter of weeks. The Corteva model was able to identify dozens of new potential crop protection molecules that its overworked chemists could not have found otherwise. He said the company is currently testing a handful of these molecules and AI will also play a role in moving the testing phase along more quickly than traditional lab-based methods.

Lutz also told Congress how Corteva scientists have deployed AI technology in its fermentation processes, which the company uses to create what he called “molecules of interest” for evaluation. Over the past few years, Corteva has used AI modeling to engineer various bacterial strains that drive fermentation reactions and optimize reaction conditions, allowing the company to run a manufacturing operation that is as efficient as possible. This application of AI helps Corteva maintain a strong U.S. manufacturing base in the Midwest, Lutz said.

“This is the new face of ag innovation,” he added. “We can accelerate discovery of new classes of crop protection products, like biologicals — nature-based solutions that help farmers grow more food by working alongside traditional crop protection products. With AI, we can begin to predict the incredible diversity of biomolecules and metabolites that are produced by microbes and other organisms, with the goal of unlocking the secrets within plant biology to develop the next generation of safe, highly targeted, nature-inspired products.”

Swale testified to AI’s role in helping researchers on his team find and develop biological-based treatments to combat Asian citrus psyllid, an invasive pest that has left the Florida citrus industry — valued at almost $10 billion just five years ago — teetering on the brink of collapse. Effective synthetic chemicals to manage the Asian citrus psyllid exist, but the regulatory hurdles to get those products onto the market are too high, he said

“We have turned to using AI to help discover chemicals of the natural world because the registration requirements are significantly lower when compared to synthetic insecticides,” Swale said.

Camiletti leads a team of researchers combining plant pathology, remote sensing and AI to help U.S. soybean farmers overcome red crown rot, a soil-borne disease first detected in Illinois soybean fields in 2018.

Illinois has been hit the hardest by the yield-robbing disease, Camiletti said, and the pathogen is spreading rapidly to Indiana, Kentucky and Missouri. The disease is difficult to detect visually, he added, and once symptoms appear it’s often too late for successful remediation.

“My team uses satellite imagery and machine learning to identify red crown rot hot spots, and we train the models with high resolution multi-spectral data to near-infrared bands and use ground observations to teach the algorithm what diseased plants look like,” Camiletti said. “This technology has real on-farm impact. We are building tools that generate prescription maps so instead of applying fungicides across entire fields farmers can target only the affected areas.”

After key witness testimony concluded, the committee opened the floor to questions from members of Congress. Watch the full hearing via the video embedded below:

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John Deere Introducing Next Generation Perception Autonomy Kits

Mon, 06 Jan 2025 18:30:00 GMT

John Deere is taking a step forward in autonomy and the technology retrofit market.

Chief Technology Officer Jahmy Hindman describes the effort as “real purpose, real autonomy”. He says the manufacturer is responding to the ongoing labor crunch that is causing headaches across the agriculture industry both domestically and abroad.

To help its users continue to farm with less reliance on human labor, John Deere has announced a suite of new retrofit autonomy kits for tractors and tillage implements, orchard sprayers, and even for the commercial landscape and construction equipment segments.

The kits feature redesigned camera arrays and rugged NVIDIA processing units paired with Blue River Technology’s machine learning algorithms, enabling John Deere machines to autonomously mimic how a human operator would react in the driver’s seat, without anyone actually sitting in the driver’s seat.

Let’s dive in and learn more about what John Deere is launching this week at the 2025 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, Nevada.

What’s New for Tractors?
John Deere and its integrated Blue River Technologies team have re-architected what it is calling its Next Generation Perception System autonomy retrofit kits. The kits are made for model year 2022 and newer 9R and 9RX tractors, and model year 20.5 and newer 8R and 8RX tractors. Also coming from John Deere is autonomy on its 5ML Series tractors.

To go along with its autonomous tractor kits, there are retrofit kits that outfit select 2017 and newer John Deere tillage implements with additional lighting, a GPS receiver mast, and harnessing for fully autonomous tiling. These autonomy ready features are factory installed as a base package for select model year 2025 tillage tools. Today, the system is only compatible with John Deere tillage implements with the autonomy kits installed, but in the future Deere is working towards compatibility with third-party tillage tools.

The new autonomy kits are made for model year 2022 and newer 9R and 9RX tractors , and model year 20.5 and newer 8R and 8RX tractors, as well as select John Deere tillage tools.

(Photos courtesy of John Deere)

Both autonomy kits will be sold within John Deere’s Precision Upgrades product segment, which the company re-branded in 2023. So far, the kits have been field tested across thousands of acres of cropland. John Deere representatives anticipate the kits will one day be compatible with planting, harvesting, and broad acre application machines. But today, autonomous field tillage is the first domino to fall.

“This expands our autonomous capabilities dramatically,” says Willy Pell, CEO, Blue River Technologies. “Farmers should not have to buy a new tractor to experience autonomy.

Pell adds the kits were designed with ease of installation in mind, especially for tractors and implements that come autonomy ready from the factory.

Let’s dive deeper into some of the components that enable autonomous capabilities within the Next Generation Perception Kits.

Let’s start with the kit’s redesigned camera arrays, which are installed onto the top of a compatible tractor model’s cab and wired into the control module. Within that new camera array are 16 stereo cameras that shoot continuously at triple overlap, giving the system a 360-degree field of vision around the tractor with plenty of redundancy for sensing crops, obstacles, potential humans and other hazards in the field.

What those cameras “see” is processed on ruggedized NVIDIA Jetson GPUs that can withstand temperatures down to -40 degrees F. With the cameras operating as the eyes of the system, the Jetson units serve as the brains and connective tissue, using edge processing to read, react, and fire off commands to the machine just as a human operator would.

Farmers that experienced John Deere’s tractor autonomy kits in the past – this version represents the second evolution of the technology since John Deere introduced it in 2022 – told the company they wanted the driver-less machines to cover more acres in a day, or night. John Deere made that happen, increasing speeds 40% to 12 mph with this iteration, and lighting kits have been added on to allow around-the-clock field work.

“We want to meet customers where they’re at today; our customers across the Midwest want to customize their tillage setups with various tools of different sizes and configurations, and we want to make as many of those tools autonomy capable with one system as possible, and that’s what we’ve done with the Generation 2 Perception System,” says Aaron Wells, Engineering and AI Systems, Blue River Technologies. “This is real autonomy that I can set, forget, and run in the field or monitor using John Deere Operations Center Mobile.”

Local John Deere dealers will have a limited number of kits available for 2025 with a full launch tabbed for 2026.

Orchard tractors and sprayers
The Next Generation Perception System kit has been slightly tweaked for permanent orchard crop growers. Those growers generally use lower horsepower machines with narrower footprints to complete tasks between trellised rows of grapes, tree nuts, and other orchard crops like apples.

In California’s massive specialty crop industry, John Deere says that over 50% of machine operator jobs posted by farming operations are going unfilled. John Deere believes its autonomy kits can lessen that reliance on seasonal labor and help farmers hit tight production windows in order to maximize yields.

The Next Generation Perception kit for orchard tractors and sprayers features fewer camera arrays than the row crop kit but adds an integrated LiDAR sensor to 3D image tree canopies and orchard trellising in real-time.

(Photos courtesy of John Deere)

Whether we’re talking about the large tractor autonomy kits or the orchard tractor-sprayer kit, the systems share many common components. Rather than needing 16 stereo cameras, the autonomous orchard tractor kit deploys seven cameras alongside three LiDAR sensors. The LiDAR sensors provide a real-time 3D image of vine and orchard crops as the tractor moves around the orchard, giving the machine the ability to tell the pull-behind sprayer implement where to apply and where not to apply.

The 5ML Specialty Tractor, along with the key Precision Essentials technology that will enable autonomy, JDLink Modem, StarFire Receiver, G5 Display, and John Deere Operations Center are all available today, with the autonomy kit being available in limited quantities in 2026.

“We’ve developed this incredible second-generation technology that allows us to scale across different crops and new industries,” says Igino Cafiero, CEO and founder, Bear Flag Robotics. John Deere acquired Bear Flag in 2021 for $250 million.

Something for your side hustle?
I have no data to back this up, but I would guess there might be some row crop farmers out there that might own commercial landscaping, construction, or excavation businesses in addition to farming full time.

For the commercial landscape segment, John Deere has extended its next Generation Perception kit to automate a new green and yellow autonomous battery electric zero-turn mower.

This autonomous battery powered commercial lawn mower remains in the concept stage today but John Deere anticipates it being available for landscape professionals in the future.

(Photos courtesy of John Deere)

While still in the concept stage of development, the commercial mower can be programmed to autonomously cut common professional landscaping patterns while its operator monitors the machine from nearby with what looks and feels like a beefed-up Xbox controller. There is also a rear standing deck that can be flipped down, with dedicated operator controls on the machine, in case the operator feels like hopping onboard and steering the mower.

And for the construction world, John Deere has applied the next Generation perception kit to create a driverless commercial dump truck. The truck can autonomously move material from Point A to Point B and even know exactly where it needs to dump its load. Site workers can use the John Deere Operations Center to define ideal routes and start, stop, and unload the giant diesel-powered machines from outside of the cab.

Again, like their row crop and specialty crop farming brethren, commercial landscape and construction firms are also feeling the squeeze of the labor shortage.

“There’s no better story, I think, than using technology for the benefit of humanity. It is our purpose and what pulls all of this together,” Hindman says. “Our number one mission in developing these kits is to help reduce the dependency on unskilled labor. We think autonomy is a significant answer to solving that dilemma for our customers.”

To learn more about the Next Generation Perception System head to Deere.com/autonomy

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Florida Citrus Growers Brace for Hurricane Milton as Forecasters Warn of 'Complete Destruction'

Tue, 08 Oct 2024 21:12:23 GMT

Milton strengthened into a Category 5 hurricane on a path toward Florida, with Governor Ron DeSantis declaring an emergency and millions of residents ordered to evacuate.

“Unless we get extremely lucky, Milton will be one of the biggest hurricane disasters in history,” leading Fox Weather hurricane meteorologist Bryan Norcross predicted Monday, shortly after the hurricane was upgraded to a Category 5 storm with winds of 180 mph.

Milton is forecast to make landfall on Florida’s west coast on Wednesday, likely between 6 PM and midnight. The center of the cone is near Tampa, but there is still uncertainty in the exact track. Norcross said it is too early to call where the storm will hit when it makes landfall Wednesday, but that if it follows the current trajectory and strikes Tampa Bay directly the city “will go underwater.” Meanwhile, Tampa’s mayor issued a dire warning before Hurricane Milton: “If you choose to stay … you are going to die.”

A forecast from the National Hurricane Center predicted storm surge for Tampa Bay could hit up to 15 feet. The storm is expected to cross the Florida peninsula and move into the Atlantic Ocean afterwards. There is an increased risk of tornadoes, with 11 million people under threat of tropical tornadoes on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Hurricane Milton is threatening to be one of the largest ever hurricanes with wind gusts already topping 200 miles per hour — leading to calls for a new Category 6 designation for such an intense superstorm. “This is nothing short of astronomical,” Florida meteorologist Noah Bergren said late Monday as Milton reached sustained winds of 180 mph and “gusts 200+ mph.” “I am at a loss for words to meteorologically describe to you the storm’s small eye and intensity,” he marveled. “This hurricane is nearing the mathematical limit of what Earth’s atmosphere over this ocean water can produce.”

Milton threatens to inflict wind damage in the northern two-thirds of Florida’s citrus belt this week, according to Commodity Weather Group. Orange juice futures rose up to 4.3% on Monday due to the threat to Florida’s citrus industry. U.S. natural gas futures fell over 4% in anticipation of reduced demand if power outages occur. Various events have been cancelled, including a championship ring ceremony for the Florida Panthers hockey team.

Citrus producers are urged to keep accurate records to document any damage or loss, including dated photos1. It’s critical for growers to report farm damage to their local USDA Service Center before starting any cleanup or repair activities. This documentation is essential for potential financial assistance from USDA.

The Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) has suspended size and weight restrictions for vehicles transporting emergency equipment, services, supplies, and agricultural commodities, including citrus. This emergency measure allows these vehicles to travel at all hours and is set to expire on Oct. 21 or upon rescission of the executive orders.

Hurricane season generally lasts through November.

Of note: New estimates reveal Hurricane Helene caused more than $47 billion in losses for property owners. The price tag for climate-related disasters is growing. Last year, storms in the U.S. caused $93.1 billion in damages, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Their cumulative toll, dating to 1980, now stands at $2.6 trillion.