MIAMI -- Robert Coker is bending ears wherever he can.

He's meeting with trade representatives and politicians every chance he gets -- in workshops, in hallways and in the coffee shop at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Miami.

This is all part of his game plan to defend the citrus and sugar industries he's a part of in Florida. Coker, a vice president for United States Sugar Corp. and Southern Gardens Citrus in Clewiston, is just one of about 20 growers and citrus representatives from Florida who are expected to converge on Miami this week for meetings on a Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) agreement.

They could be joined by as many as 20,000 protesters later in the week, including environmentalists, consumer activists and union representatives.

The idea behind the FTAA is to integrate 34 countries and to reduce the impediments to market access for their goods and services in the Western Hemisphere, with the exception of Cuba. To citrus growers, that means a tariff charged on Brazilian juice imports could be lifted.

Without the tariff, Coker and many others believe Florida's entire citrus industry will dry up. At stake is a $9 billion commercial citrus industry in Florida and an industry that pumps more than $500 million into Southwest Florida's economy.

Southern Gardens Citrus is one of the largest citrus growers in Southwest Florida and the state, with 28,000 acres. That's why Coker has been doing so much talking in the past 24 hours. He's battling on two fronts: He's fighting for the Brazilian citrus tariff and against a reduction in tariffs on sugar imported into the United States. If the new agreement reduces sugar tariffs, Coker feels the U.S. industry will be at a real disadvantage because international tariffs throughout the world will still be high.

He wasted no time voicing that concern when he had the opportunity on Monday during an Americas Business Forum, which is giving business leaders across the hemisphere the opportunity to have a say in the trade negotiations.

At the first workshop Coker attended on agriculture, a panelist mentioned sugar as an example of a sensitive export crop.

That was enough to get Coker going. He got up to say tariffs on sugar should be negotiated at the World Trade Organization level -- not in a regional agreement like the FTAA.

Coker attended three two-hour workshops on Monday and in between those meetings and a working lunch he arranged one-on-one talks with smaller groups and individuals -- many of them politicians.

Andy LaVigne, executive vice president and CEO of Florida Citrus Mutual, the industry's largest trade group, is also trying to save the tariff. Citrus Mutual has launched a $7 million lobbying and advertising campaign to keep the tariff on Brazilian juice.

Not long after he arrived in Miami, LaVigne learned that talks had hit a roadblock and that there were talks of scaling back the free-trade region. He is working to understand how that might affect Florida's citrus industry.

Today, he expects to meet with trade representatives from Mexico, Costa Rica, Belize and the Dominican Republic, developing countries that produce citrus and have their own concerns about the elimination of the U.S. tariff on Brazilian juice.

He hopes to find allies in these countries in the fight to save the tariff, which equates to about 30 cents a gallon.

Later in the week two other local citrus growers are expected to arrive in Miami to help in the fight to keep the tariff.

Citrus has yet to draw much discussion. But that's expected to change in coming days. And so is the mood in Miami. The thousands of protesters have yet to arrive. But preparations are being made for them. Steel gates around a secured area started going up at about noon on Monday, as a way to contain protesters.

Police seemed to be everywhere -- on foot, on horses, on bicycles, on the water and in the air. They were stopping people who don't have special passes from getting into what's known as the "hard security perimeter," an area that snakes around the downtown area and limits access to the three hotels business leaders, trade ministers and other delegates are meeting in.

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