From Mesa to Scottsdale to Surprise, orange groves used to cover much of Maricopa County, making citrus one of the industries that defined Arizona’s economy.
But with nearly all of those oranges replaced by housing, malls and other developments, is citrus still one of the state’s five C’s?
Arizona’s citrus industry was valued at over $100 million annually in the early 1990s before home building and development displaced most of the large scale orchards in Maricopa County, according to USDA’s annual citrus reports…