this post was submitted on 02 Jun 2024
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A global shortage of oranges that sent prices soaring has prompted some orange juice manufacturers to consider turning to alternative fruits to make the breakfast staple.

...

"There are three main factors driving the soaring price of orange juice, and it's drought, disease and demand," Ted Jenkin, oXYGen Financial CEO and co-founder, told FOX Business.

The spike stems from declining output in Florida, which is the primary U.S. producer, and disease and extreme weather events in Brazil, which accounts for about 70% of global production.

Orange trees in Brazil have been suffering from a disease known as citrus greening. Once infected, citrus trees produce fruits that are partially green, small, misshapen and bitter. There is no cure, and trees typically die within a few years of infection.

The disease, along with severe heat waves and drought that occurred during the pivotal phases of flowering and early fruit formation, have put Brazil on track to register one of its worst orange harvests in more than three decades, according to a new report published by Fundecitrus and CitrusBR.

...

In the past, orange juice makers have avoided long-term shortages by freezing juice stock, which can be preserved and used for up to two years, according to the Financial Times. However, even that frozen stock is dissipating because of a three-year shortage build-up.

Cools said that manufacturers may have to consider using a different fruit, like mandarins, because their trees are more resistant to the greening disease. However, that could be a lengthy process.

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[–] [email protected] 128 points 5 months ago (4 children)

The currently sold-in-stores orange juice tastes almost nothing like actual orange juice already.

[–] [email protected] 66 points 5 months ago (1 children)

You have been drinking orange juice, not orange juice. It's an easy mistake to make.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (2 children)

Orange flavored drink .

The best orange juice I tasted was in Rome at Dunkin Donuts, They squeeze the blood oranges right into a cup for you! 🤤. This was a long time ago.

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[–] [email protected] 22 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Right I have no idea how they make that stuff but I just always assumed it contains little actual orange.

[–] [email protected] 80 points 5 months ago (2 children)

There’s a dirty secret in your glass of orange juice. Even though it says “not from concentrate,” it probably sat in a large vat for up to year with all the oxygen removed from it. This allows it to be preserved and dispensed all year-round. Taking out all the O2 also gets rid of all the flavor. So the juice makers have to add the flavors back in using preformulated recipes full of chemicals called “flavor packs.” Mmm, delicious, fresh-squeezed ethyl-butyrate!

https://consumerist.com/2011/07/29/oj-flavor-packs/

[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 months ago

Ecogreenaturalganic 100% GMO-free.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (7 children)

The brand "simply" tastes like fresh squeezed (it also is the proper color and not that Nickelodeon neon orange), but most other brands taste more like Sunny Delight than actual orange juice.

Simply is hella expensive tho.

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 5 months ago (3 children)

Generic orange juice is a commodified product (ie, you can order a standard 1 tonne of frozen orange juice whenever).

The freezing process destroys a lot of the flavour, so some rind extract is included to bulk up the taste.

Freshly squeezed still has the original flavour, and not the added rind flavour.

(I didn't look this up, mind, it's possibly I've just repeated an old wives tale!)

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[–] [email protected] 89 points 5 months ago (2 children)

If my grade school art teacher was correct, they could take some red cranberry juice and add some yellow lemon juice to get the same result.

[–] [email protected] 44 points 5 months ago (25 children)

Ngl, that actually sounds pretty good

[–] [email protected] 23 points 5 months ago (1 children)

It's not that far off of a cosmopolitan cocktail in concept

[–] [email protected] 12 points 5 months ago

Just needs vodka

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[–] [email protected] 87 points 5 months ago (4 children)

let me guess, climate change?

[–] [email protected] 78 points 5 months ago

And capitalistic mass production with no respect for natural resources, aka intensive farming. Plants are grown in huge monocultures with little to no genetic diversity thus making them prone to what would naturally be limited issues like unfavourable weather or diseases

[–] [email protected] 42 points 5 months ago

Can't say that in Florida, so it must be something else

[–] [email protected] 37 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Here in Florida there is a disease called citrus greening. The fruit grows small and falls off before it's ripe. It's basically destroyed the citrus industry. It's spread by flying insects so impossible to control and there is no cure.

So climate change doesn't help but that's not the main culprit.

[–] [email protected] 37 points 5 months ago (3 children)

Flying insects are not necessarily impossible to control. You can promote the populations of their predators.

The problem is, that usually requires promoting a mixture of amphibians, birds, reptiles, small mammals, and other insects. To do that, you need a habitat full of various plants, trees, and terrains, but vast swathes of land have been turned into dead monoculture, so the predators die out.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 5 months ago

That works to mitigate flying insects but you are always going to have some. With citrus greening all you need is one to go from infected tree to uninfected tree and the tree is now fatally infected.

Worse the tree will live for years and the insects spread the bacteria for miles from one infected tree. Florida has spent almost two decades fighting the disease. And lost badly.

Hell even is we had done ruthless culling of any citrus within a large range of and infected tree like we did with citrus canker in the 90s it probably wouldn't have worked.

We failed to stop canker from spreading and canker only hurt production and made the fruit ugly and suitable only for juice. It was also much easier to manage as it was spread by leaf to leaf contact and via things like stepping on the leaves in one grove and not cleaning your boots before entering another grove.

In 2004 Florida produced 240 million boxes of citrus. Greening was discovered in Miami in 2005. In 2023 Florida produced 16 million boxes.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Predators? That sounds expensive, complicated, and could negatively affect profits.

Can't we just spray the trees with massive quantities of something cheap and effective like DDT?

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[–] [email protected] 29 points 5 months ago (3 children)

Best thing about the color and fruit having the same name is as long as the juice color is the same it will always be Orange Juice.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 5 months ago

Warning: this is orange juice, not orange juice

[–] [email protected] 11 points 5 months ago

The color is named after the fruit

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[–] [email protected] 29 points 5 months ago (4 children)

They didn’t give a reason for declining output in Florida. I assume global warming related, but I wonder if there’s another reason

[–] [email protected] 43 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

They pissed off migrant workers too, didn't they?

[–] [email protected] 43 points 5 months ago (1 children)

They didn’t give a reason for declining output in Florida.

It does say:

On top of that, Florida has been hit by a series of hurricanes as well as the greening disease, which is spread by a tiny insect called the Asian citrus psyllid.

[–] [email protected] 44 points 5 months ago (2 children)

There's also the fact that Florida just chased away all the migrant workers and undocumented workers. Bit of a labor shortage down there at the moment.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 5 months ago

We did chase away a lot of the migrant workers and climate change is very real. However it's the citrus greening that is to blame. We don't even need the citrus pickers because there is nothing to pick.

Here is a picture of an orange on one of my trees. Itt should be much bigger starting to turn yellow and unblemished. It will get a little bigger stay green and then fall off.

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[–] [email protected] 33 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Chasing out all of the migrant labor with threats of legal action and/or violence.

They just didn't want to say that for some reason.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Wee bit of a labor shortage perhaps?

[–] [email protected] 9 points 5 months ago (1 children)

There is no labor shortage with current production efficiency. There is labor underpay.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Florida has been making it increasingly difficult and hazardous for undocumented immigrants to live and work in Florida. Hence labor shortage.

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[–] [email protected] 23 points 5 months ago

Oh how the tables have turned...

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20220627-how-orange-juice-took-over-the-breakfast-table

"The innovation [of concentrated juice] arrived as Florida growers were dealing with cyclical, massive overproduction. The promise of a new way to make juice that could be kept frozen, then reconstituted in people’s homes, prompted them into even more production, however. They ramped up tree planting in the 1940s. The oranges went to frozen concentrate and eventually, to chilled juice, an industry term for the refrigerated product. If juice could be kept in stasis, held in waiting for a consumer’s glass, then the only problem was ramping up demand as much as possible."

...

"It had taken a few decades, but with the help of advertising and processing technology, the dumping ground for extra oranges was solidly ensconced as its own product, far outpacing oranges themselves in sales."

[–] [email protected] 23 points 5 months ago

It isn't just ' freezing juice stock', really that hasn't been the way things have been done in a long time.

JuicePaks from givaudan have been normalized since maybe the '80's.

Consumers expect orange juice to taste like 'orange juice', year round, whether it was a good or bad year. There isn't anything intrinsically bad about that anymore than expecting bananas to taste like Cavendish.

The world is changing though, and tastes will have to adapt.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 5 months ago (2 children)

It's raspberry jam all over again!

[–] [email protected] 10 points 5 months ago

"Ain't no such thing as climate change!!!"

[Climate charge ends orange juice]

"Librulz want to CANCEL my orange juice!!!!"

[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 months ago

"My God. The Dukes are going to corner the entire frozen orange juice market!"

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago

I have mine falling on the floor because I can't eat/drink them all.

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