FORT PIERCE -- Citrus growers are taking heart in their fight against Brazilian citrus from a recent victory by the sugar industry.

Andy LaVigne, vice president and chief executive officer of Florida Citrus Mutual, said Thursday that sugar's exclusion from the recent U.S.-Australian free trade agreement bodes well for citrus.

"It opened the door for citrus to be taken off the table, too," LaVigne said.

LaVigne spoke at Florida Citrus Mutual's area meeting for growers, held at the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Horticultural Research Center in Fort Pierce.

LaVigne and others lobbying for the 29-cents-a-gallon tariff on Brazilian orange juice have stressed that without the fee, Brazil, the world's largest orange juice producer, would become a monopoly.

LaVigne said the fight to keep the tariff could take up to five years.

One difficulty is that Florida is the only state that is a major orange juice producer, leaving it to stand alone politically.

"We don't have 16 states like some commodities," LaVigne said.

The industry is working to align itself with other countries such as Mexico and Costa Rica, which could also be affected if Brazil becomes all-powerful.

Growers got support Thursday from U.S. Rep. Alcee Hastings, D-Miramar, who told the farmers about growing up in a citrus-growing family in Altamonte Springs. He said he supports maintaining the tariff.

"We can't stop globalization, but I am committed to the continued enforcement of import tariffs on citrus. The government is not doing enough to protect agriculture," Hastings said.

"I do support U.S. economic expansion. I do not support it at the expense of businesses and jobs in America," he said.

Growers also heard from Citrus Mutual's economist, Robert Barber, who laid out some sobering statistics about how much orange juice U.S. consumers are downing.

Americans are drinking an average of 4.7 gallons of orange juice a year, down a full gallon since 1999-00.

Viewed another way, the country will consume 1.38 billion gallons of orange juice this year versus 1.6 billion gallons in 1999-00, a 13 percent drop, leaving producers with a 785-million-gallon juice inventory, Barber said.

The primary factor reason for the dropoff is the current trend for low-carb diets, he said.

On the canker front, officials are gearing up to remove 165,000 to 200,000 exposed trees in South Florida, said Connie Riherd, assistant director of the Florida Department of Agriculture's Division of Plant Industry.

"It will take us a year and a half or more to accomplish that," Riherd said.