One farm has leveraged their legacy and grit, relationships and a long-term mindset to build optimism, capitalize on opportunities to stay relevant despite a changing industry, and strengthen their resilience.

Morgan McKenna Porter and her family, operating McKenna Brothers in Florida, are dealing with a devastating disease that’s permanently shifted the Florida citrus industry. Morgan is a fifth-generation citrus farmer who grew up in the groves and is now managing her family’s operation with her cousin Riley. While Riley and Morgan are the future of McKenna Brothers, their dads, Pat and Marty, are still very much involved. Both generations are key to the operation’s success, and they’re running the family’s operation while tackling a persistent problem: citrus greening.

Citrus greening is a disease that’s taken hold of Florida’s orange groves over the last two decades. It makes the trees stop growing properly and impacts the fruit. The disease progressed quickly and was devastating to the industry, reducing production by more than 90% over the last 20 years. Many farmers haven’t survived it, but Morgan’s family is fighting it head-on to save the McKenna Brothers’ legacy and ensure a future for Florida’s citrus industry, because they believe it’s an industry worth saving.

“We are still an industry that contributes $7 billion in economic impact to Florida, with over 35,000 jobs,” Morgan says. “We are without a doubt smaller than we used to be and will probably never be that size again but we’re still an economic force. We still have a future. It might be smaller but is not insignificant.”

Growing up on a citrus farm

The McKenna Brothers operation spans Polk, Hardee and Highlands counties in Central Florida. They currently harvest and caretake around 2,000 acres, but at their prime, they were caretaking 5,000 acres and harvesting about a million boxes a year.

Morgan grew up watching her dad and her uncle make what used to be a family hobby for prior generations into a full-fledged family business. “They were the first two to dive in headfirst and decide to make it an official family business,” Morgan says.

Some of Morgan’s fondest memories are of growing up on the farm, and she plans to create the same kinds of memories for her kids, a 2.5-year-old son and a baby girl she’s due to have any day now.

She recalls a time when her dad dropped her and Riley off in the grove with plastic knives from Wendy’s because, as Pat said: “your moms said we couldn’t leave y’all out here with pocketknives, so we did plastic ones.” She chuckles at the memory of being in the grove “helping” with her frosty and plastic knife. “We weren’t old enough to have pocketknives but apparently we were old enough to be in the grove by ourselves,” Morgan says. “Since then, we’ve done all the jobs from checking micro jets to being on the vine crew to operating speed sprayers.”

While her actual title on the farm is operations manager, Morgan thinks chaos coordinator is a better way to describe her role. “I wear whatever hat I need to wear that day,” Morgan says. “I’m always looking for ways to make the operation more efficient, so changing hats quickly has become my job.”

The challenge that’s shaping the future

In the pursuit of efficiency, Morgan’s always looking for opportunities that will benefit their operation. Striking a balance between efficiency and yield is an age-old challenge for farmers, but it’s different for this generation because they’re up against such a challenging disease. Citrus is a permanent tree crop, so the McKenna family has to live with greening in their current trees. There’s no reset button unless they remove a tree, plant a new one and wait 4-5 years for it to produce fruit.

“The biggest change from my dad and uncle’s generation to ours is they got to farm in a world without greening and Riley and I have only ever known the farming world with greening in it,” Morgan says. “We’re always asking ourselves how we farm to get to an economically viable point while battling a disease that we assume has a 100% infection rate.”

Every agronomic and financial decision they make is influenced by disease pressure, and it’s the defining challenge that’s shaping everything this generation of citrus farmers does. While previous generations could use a one-size-fits-all agronomic approach, this generation isn’t able to. Morgan is regularly pivoting multiple times in a season. “My dad and uncle are innovative and progressive farmers, but I always joke that when they started, they could set up a program in October that included as many hunting and fishing trips as they wanted,” Morgan says. “Riley and I can’t sneak off as much because we’re farming in a different world right now.”

The value of relationships

While the challenges they’re facing are different from the ones their fathers had, one thing remains the same: the relationships you cultivate can make a huge difference to your operation. One relationship that’s stood the test of time with McKenna Brothers is the one they have with Nutrien Ag Solutions.

“I’m an old timer, I’ve been in business for 36 years,” says Jed Weeks, Nutrien’s branch manager in Wauchula, Fla. “I’ve worked with Morgan’s father and uncle, Pat and Marty McKenna, for at least 25 of those years. Maybe even longer. It’s been so long I’ve lost track of it, but we go way back.”

Jed has his own small citrus and beef operation, so he understands the cycles growers are facing and his four decades in the citrus industry give him a helpful perspective on the types of offers different farms could benefit from.

Recently, McKenna Brothers had an opportunity to expand through a long-term lease opportunity, which was only possible for them to take advantage of because of their use of Nutrien Financial.

“We work very hard and closely with Morgan to ensure we’re optimizing the benefits of the program so they can use the products they need but defer the payment,” Jed says. “We help her come up with a plan to pay off the inputs that are at a higher percentage and ride the ones with the lower interest, so she can get cash flow going.”

It’s that cash flow solution that’s helped McKenna Brothers expand their operation and kept them with Nutrien Financial through the decades.

“Nutrien has been very loyal and supportive to McKenna Brothers,” says Morgan. “Pricing is important but so is service, reliability and consistency and Nutrien has all of those. They give us the flexibility we need to be efficient with our dollars.”

Long-term mindset

To combat citrus greening, Morgan and Riley operate with a long-term mindset and financial flexibility as key tools. Being strategic with how they pay for inputs has allowed them to build a gold-standard horticultural program to help fight greening, instead of cutting corners.

You need to save costs without sacrificing your tree health or your horticultural plan and Nutrien Financial has been instrumental in allowing us to do that,” Morgan says. “It really allows us to align our inputs with what Mother Nature has dealt us.”

Because they’ve used financing to offset a heavy upfront outlay of cash for inputs, they’ve been able to continue operating with a long-term strategy instead of month-to-month figuring out how to pay bills each month.

“If you farm with one foot in the ground, you’re going to have one foot in the ground and eventually you’re going to fall in,” Morgan says.

Permanent crops like citrus take years before they yield, so growers are always thinking years ahead versus season to season. That long-term view is beneficial to growers of all types of crops, not just citrus.

“Farming with a long-term view is keeping your eyes not at your feet, but on the horizon,” Morgan says.

Eyes on the horizon

Morgan believes there’s a bright future for Florida’s citrus industry. It’s why she’s fighting so hard to help move research forward that can advance their efforts to combat greening. Morgan chairs the Citrus Research and Development Foundation, which was formed to coordinate research funding to fight citrus greening.

She says part of the path forward is staying clear on short-term versus long-term needs. She says the short-term needs are things like paying people and maintaining tree health; but in the long-term, the industry needs a “tree of the future” that’s better designed to withstand greening. She points to promising research coming from the University of Florida and some rootstocks that have encouraging signs.

Morgan says it could take 15 years for a disease-resistant tree to be produced, but that length of time doesn’t deter her. “My crystal ball is in the repair shop,” she says. “But with permanent crops, that long-term mentality is crucial.”

With a long-term orientation that persists even when short-term conditions are difficult, Morgan will be leading the fight from the front, and Nutrien will be right there beside her.

“My goal isn’t for my 2.5-year-old or his baby sister to have to work in Florida citrus, but I wouldn’t be opposed if they wanted to. It’s about preserving the culture and what’s around them,” Morgan says. “We will never be the size industry that we were, but there’s a reason we’re on every state license plate, and I’m going to do my part. I want to preserve the culture that I love about Florida to the best of my ability.”

Disruption isn’t a question of if, but when. It’s farmers like Morgan who have the right partners – financial, research and community – that can overcome seemingly insurmountable obstacles and keep going.