On the recordSeptember 20, 2016
This bill makes a slight change to the existing law in order to help struggling farmers. The U.S. citrus industry faces a grave threat from an incurable bacterial disease called citrus greening. While not harmful to humans, it results in bitter, hard, misshapen fruit and eventually causes trees to die. The disease arrived in Florida in 2005 and has since infected 99 percent of the commercial citrus groves in my State as well as 50 percent of the groves in Texas. Greening has begun to march across the country and has been found in California, Louisiana, South Carolina, and Georgia. Once infected, trees must be uprooted and destroyed. Replacing citrus trees is costly, but farmers have no choice as they must replant in order to earn a living. This disease has put 62,000 citrus jobs at risk in my State alone. The Tax Code currently allows farmers to fully deduct the cost of replanting trees that are damaged by drought, disease, or pests; but the current rule has a significant limitation: in order to get the deduction, the farmers must bear the costs of replanting the trees themselves. My bill would let farmers bring in investors to help underwrite replanting costs without losing the immediate deduction; and, to ensure that farmers keep working their land, my bill requires them to maintain at least a 50 percent interest in their groves in order to use this deduction.…
