Colin Risdahl

It's a it's a climate story.

It's a it's a biological story.

It's development, all of those things.

It is also a cultural story.

You spend a lot of time driving around with people who for generations now have done citrus in Florida and their livelihoods have been eradicated or drastically changed.

It was just sad, I think, you know?

Definitely, yeah.

I felt in the process of reporting it, it was very affecting.

You know, it's a social history, right, as well as it is the story of a fruit tree.

It's about the old Florida and the class structure of old Florida, right?

The citrus families, this dynastic wealth of old Florida.

They've also seen a great decline in their stature.

You know, people for generations, like, you know, the number of names you see in this industry that are juniors or thirds or fourths,

And it's really all gone.

It's really, it changed so, so quickly.

And it's the story of the social history of, of citrus in Florida to me is as persuasive as compelling, maybe even more than, uh, just the sort of economic story or the biological story of, of, uh,

of the tree itself.

And, you know, being there with, with people who've seen that change firsthand, you know, a lot of this is pegged as recently as to 2007, when the state began to deregulate some of the development standards for the housing industry.

And, you know, it went so quickly and you really get that sense talking to people and being there.

It is an amazing piece in slate.